


sunrise service

by wekea



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mild Kink, Slice of Life, background changki, background hyungwonho, kihyun's jewish, unrepentant marijuana use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-01-30 19:23:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12659832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekea/pseuds/wekea
Summary: A slice of life story, in which: Jooheon discovers himself and Minhyuk at the same time; Kihyun jumps the gun; Changkyun causes almost as many problems as he fixes; Hoseok loves flaming hot cheetos; Hyunwoo is here somewhere gimme a minute





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> don't worry, i know that jooheon and kihyun go to church together!! it just turned out like this. please forgive me.

"Sweetie!" The voice rang out, if a voice that rough could ring, and Jooheon startled, taking a step back out of the nursery and bumping into a mom and son who'd been following him in. "I haven't seen you since Christmas!"

'Sweetie' turned out to be Jooheon’s niece, perched sullen and pastel on his hip, and the voice turned out to belong to a guy in a smock standing behind the check in counter. He was smiling and his bleached blond hair practically shimmered in the fluorescent light and he beamed like the sun. (Jooheon's head was filled briefly by his father saying _He Is Risen_ at dawn in the joyous tones only a lifelong Presbyterian can summon) Jooheon felt nailed to the ground.

"It's so nice to see you again Jaehee!" The nursery volunteer leaned over the counter, not even giving Jooheon a second look. He spoke with a slight accent, just a little bit choppy in a way that reminded Jooheon of his grandmother’s english. "We have cupcakes back here. Do you want a cupcake?"

Jaehee's sullen expression turned to one of intrigued cynicism. "What kind?"

The nursery apron had the name M I N N I E across the chest. "Tell you what," Minnie said, glancing around conspiratorially, "I'll give you three."

Jooheon blanched. "Three?"

"Shush, dad," Minnie said, matching Jaehee's terrible two glare. "We're negotiating."

"Deal," Jaehee said, and she elbowed her way out of Jooheon's grip to reach imperiously over the counter for Minnie to lift her over, which he did. "Three. You promised."

"I'm a man of my word," Minnie said, hefting Jaehee into his hip and filling out the check-in form with his free hand like a professional. "Okay dad, this is your part—"

"I'm single," Jooheon said. Minnie looked up at him, pen frozen in the middle of writing down the date. "I mean she's, I'm—"

"He’s my uncle Honey," Jaehee said impatiently, beginning to kick her tiny patent leather maryjanes against Minnie's hip. "Where are the cupcakes?"

Minnie laughed then, (thank god), and turned the clipboard around. "Sign and date there, Honey."

While Jooheon signed Minnie whipped up a name tag for Jaehee before slapping it on her chest and setting her down with directions to the cupcake table. "They're micro cupcakes," he whispered, grinning impishly at the somewhat stricken look on Jooheon's face. "Most kids will eat three. Don't worry, if you don't tell her parents I won't either."

"Do you need help?" Jooheon blurted out. "This looks a lot more fun—” Across the room a small child projectile vomited on a racetrack rug. “—than staying upstairs at the service."

Minnie suddenly turned serious, leaning over. "God," he said, keeping his voice low. "I know, right?"

 

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“You look happy,” Kihyun said. It wasn’t technically an accusation, but then nothing ever technically was with Kihyun. “How was church?”

Minhyuk struggled with his seat belt. “I had five mini cupcakes and got pissed on by a three year old,” he said, sighing as he flopped back happily against the passenger seat. “You know. The usual.”

“Are you telling me you’ve brought the urine of a child into my car? My actual car? I’m never picking you up again.”

“What kind of nursery volunteer would I be if I didn’t bring a complete change of clothes every Sunday?” Minhyuk asked, rolling his window down distractedly to push up and out, waving furiously. “Hi sweetie! Hi honey!”

It was Jooheon and his niece Jaehee, walking in their Easter Sunday best in a little herd with Jooheon’s parents and what had to be Jaehee’s parents. Jaehee was up on Jooheon’s hip like a little pastel pink koala, skirts kicked up and showing ruffly bloomers, and they both turned at the sound of Minhyuk’s voice. Jooheon looked surprised but Jaehee just squealed and attempted to launch herself out of her uncle’s arms and into Minhyuk’s window.

“Aha,” Kihyun said, stepping on the brake and staring down Minhyuk like a hellhound spotting its particularly obnoxious prey. “The mystery of your good mood has been solved. New friends?”

“Hello sweetie-pie,” Minhyuk crooned, halfway out the window to hold Jaehee’s chubby little hand. “Heading home to see your puppy?”

“We’re getting breakfast first,” Jooheon said.

“He was talking to _me_ ,” Jaehee said sternly. It was the voice of an older sister in the making, and Jooheon was sufficiently bullied into silence. She turned back to Minhyuk. “We’re getting breakfast first.”

 _Bweakfast_ , Jooheon mouthed behind her back, imitating her toddler speech impediment. Minhyuk decided not to smile but promptly failed under the thousand watt glow of Jooheon’s dimples.

“That sounds so nice! I’m doing that too!” Minhyuk wiggled her hand and beamed at her as she happily patted his cheek with her other hand. “Where are you getting—” ( _Don’t say bweakfast. Don’t say bweakfast. Don’t say bweakfast._ ) “—breakfast?”

Jaehee appeared to consider this for a second before turning to her uncle and thwapping him on the head a couple times to get his attention. “Where we gettin’ breakfast, Honey?”

( _Bweakfast_ , Minhyuk’s brain said, seeing Jooheon’s mouth forming the word in his mind’s eye. Then he got a little caught up with just seeing Jooheon’s mouth for a little while. It was a pleasant diversion.)

“7th Street Diner,” Jooheon said, squinting and leaning as far out of Jaehee’s reach as he could. “I don’t know if you—”

“7th Street Diner?” Minhyuk interrupted. “That’s where we’re going too!”

“Oh no,” Kihyun said from the driver’s seat, but it was in a pleasantly resigned sort of way. Minhyuk had the go-ahead as long as Kihyun didn’t mutter _oh my fucking god_ under his breath. “Let me guess—”

“We can eat bweakfast together!” Jaehee yelled, lurching forward to slap Minhyuk’s outstretched hands with dozens of tiny high fives.

“Yay!” he said, high fiving her right back.

Behind him Kihyun heaved a long-suffering sigh but in front of him Jooheon looked a little shy and a lot handsome and priorities were priorities. “See you there, Honey,” Minhyuk said, fluttering his fingers in farewell as he sank back down into his seat and Kihyun took his foot off the brake. “Drive, Jeeves!”

“I will push you out on the freeway,” Kihyun said conversationally. “Don’t put anything out the window that you’re not prepared to lose. That includes the top half of your body.”

“He’s cute, right?” Minhyuk rolled up his window and watched the Lee family disappear through the side mirror as Kihyun pulled out of the church parking lot. “He helped in the nursery through the whole service. The two year olds put easter egg stickers all over his face and he talked to them in this really ridiculous baby talk, it was horrible, I loved it.”

“Shit,” Kihyun said. “Your dream man.”

“I know!”

“And you’re already going on your first date!” He nudged Minhyuk with one elbow across the center panel, not taking his eyes off the road. “You rascal! All it took was seeing this Honey boy with a couple of babies on him to get your heart fluttering, huh?”

“No,” Minhyuk whined. He huffed. “Maybe. I don’t know. He’s cute. He told me he was single.”

Kihyun stepped on the brake a little harder than he strictly needed to in order to stop at a light. “He _told_ you,” he said. “He _told_ you he was single?”

“I thought he was Jaehee’s dad,” Minhyuk said, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation to him. “It’s not that deep.”

“People only tell you they’re single when they’re interested in fixing that,” Kihyun said. “Preferably with you.”

“That’s not necessarily why,” Minhyuk replied. “Now hush, I have to mentally prepare myself for consuming pancakes in horrifying numbers.”

 

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The first horrible thing that happened, in Jooheon’s opinion, was that when they arrived at the diner Minhyuk was already there, beaming that big happy smile that would have reminded Jooheon of a ray of sunlight piercing through clouds if he had a poetic bone in his body. Minhyuk was already there, chatting with Jooheon’s mom and holding the door open.

The second horrible that thing that happened was when Minhyuk caught his eye and seemed to smile just for him.

In his university days Jooheon had been what his friends referred to as a College Bisexual, the kind of person who messed around in the dorms before sliding back into heteronormativity after graduating, but he’d already cycled through all of that and now a boy called Minnie was smiling a smile like a ray of sunlight piercing through clouds and he’d never been less heterosexual in his life.

Jaehee tugged his hand as they milled around in the foyer, waiting for the host to come and seat them. “I like him too,” she whispered in his ear, pulling him down and going up on her toes. “You should give him a bracelet.”

“A friendship bracelet?” Jooheon whispered back. “Do you wanna make some when we get back to grandma’s house?”

She lit up in the sort of pleasantly evil way only toddlers and very stupid cats can achieve. “Yes,” she hissed, slamming her face into his thigh and clinging to his leg.

They got into a big booth in the back of the diner because apparently the owner (and Jooheon’s favorite waitress at the diner) had been Minhyuk’s mom the whole time. She ushered them back happily, took a whole round of drink orders without even having to flip her notepad open, and scored major points with Jaehee by bringing her a Spider-man booster seat, extra crayons, and telling her that there’d be whipped cream on her hot cocoa.

She’d come and gone a few times so the table was scattered with napkins and empty plates and what seemed like a dozen little plastic syrup pitchers by the time the third horrible thing happened, which was Jooheon’s very Presbyterian father turning to Minhyuk’s friend Kihyun at the table and saying, “I don’t believe we saw you at the service. Do you attend another church?”

“He’s Jewish,” Minhyuk piped up into the awkward moment that threatened to bloom across the table like a ripe corpse flower. He stuffed an inhuman amount of pancake into his mouth but continued speaking regardless, a feat that somehow endeared him even more. “He doesn’t do Easter Sunday.”

“I appreciate the Cadbury eggs,” Kihyun said, nodding thoughtfully as he chewed a bite of hashbrowns smeared with apple sauce. “But mostly I’m just Minhyuk’s ride to church.”

“We’re flatmates,” Minhyuk added, as though that explained everything.

“Of course,” Jooheon’s dad stuttered, having the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

But then Jaehee started to cry and that distracted everyone until the cause of her distress was exposed, which was when she planted her wet face in Jooheon’s chest and sucked in a hiccuping breath and said, “I don’t want Minnie’s friend to go to Hell,” in a very tiny and very upset little voice.

“Oh my gosh,” Jaehee’s mother said, going a little bit blue in the face in a flash of abject horror. “Oh my gosh I promise we didn’t teach her that, Jaehee baby that’s not how it works—”

Minhyuk’s mother took this golden opportunity to swan up to the table. “Kihyunnie, did George make the latkes right for you?”

“Give George my sincerest compliments,” Kihyun replied, leaning forward to give her two thumbs up. “He got the crunch just right.”

“I gave him my kosher cookbook,” Minhyuk’s mom said, winking and nudging him on the shoulder.

Kihyun laughed. “I told you not to bother him with that, Mom!”

Minhyuk was sitting on the other side of Jaehee (she’d insisted, holding both of their hands in her deceptively strong grip) and he was crooning comfortingly to her and petting her hair. Mostly what Jooheon heard was, “don’t worry, sweetie,” and, “isn’t it so wonderful that there are so many different ways people can be?” and, “oh I love friendship bracelets!”

“She loves friendship bracelets,” Jooheon cut in awkwardly, trying to escape the judeo-christian conversation still lurching haltingly around the table. His older sister had been bright pink for minutes now and his mother had the look on her face that said _you just wait until we get home_ whenever she glanced at Jooheon’s dad.

“Me and Honey are gonna make some,” Jaehee said, damnation and hellfire forgotten in the face of impending arts and crafts. “When we get to grandma’s.”

The fourth and worst horrible thing that happened was that Jaehee then added: “Honey likes you. He wants to make you a friendship bracelet so you can get married.”

Minhyuk looked up and suddenly he and Jooheon were face to face, less than a foot away from each other, and then Minhyuk smiled. “Honey can bring it to me at church next week,” he said, looking Jooheon on the eye.

Jooheon slapped his hands over Jaehee’s ears. “I don’t really go to church,” he whispered.

“Neither do I,” Minhyuk whispered back. “You don’t have to believe in Jesus to cuddle babies.”

“Can I have your number? I can come pick you up?”

“Honey, your hands are sweaty! Stop it!!”

 

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“Only you,” Kihyun said, but he was laughing as he spoke. “Only you would pick up a guy volunteering in the nursery of a presbyterian church, which you do despite being an _atheist_ —”

“I don’t have any babies in my life otherwise,” Minhyuk interjected. “And anyway you wouldn’t believe how catchy the songs are.”

“Yes,” Kihyun said, nudging the turn signal to turn into their driveway, “I would. You won’t stop singing them in the house. My _point_ is how gay can you get?”

“About this gay,” Minhyuk replied happily, scrolling through his contacts until he reached Jooheon’s name and proceeded to add as many bumblebee emojis to it as his phone allowed. “Do you think he likes bottoming?”

“From the way he was looking at you I’m pretty sure that his favorite sex act is whatever you want to do to him. It was gross, by the way.”

“I know,” Minhyuk sighed dreamily. “He’s perfect.”

 

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"So there's this guy," Jooheon said. It was Saturday and he’d almost made it a whole week without telling Changkyun every single one of his deepest darkest secrets, which was a personal best.

"Okay," Changkyun said, chasing the last flecks of croissant around his plate with one fingertip. "I've heard of those before. What about him? Is he a jerk?"

"No," said Jooheon, "god - no, he's not a jerk, he's amazing." Changkyun paused, looking up at him with one eyebrow arched on an otherwise very blank face. "He's fine," Jooheon said, withering under Changkyun's stare. "He's not a jerk. That's all."

"Are you going full gay?" Changkyun asked after a second.

"What?"

"Full gay," Changkyun repeated, shoving his plate aside in order to lean urgently over the table. "Do you have a boner for this guy?"

"Holy shit, could you—" Jooheon looked around the coffee shop with wide eyes, but the only other person was the barista, who mostly looked bored and was scrolling through her phone behind the counter. "It would be great," Jooheon said, "if you could not refer to me having a boner in public."

Changkyun gave him a skeptical look. "You've never had a boner in public?"

Jooheon slumped over on the table, covering his head with his arms. "Jaehee loves him, and I don't know what I'm doing, and it turns out his mom owns 7th Street Diner so I can never go back there again—"

"Holy shit," Changkyun interrupted. "That place is fucking incredible. If you had an in with the owner..." He reached across the table to take Jooheon's hands somberly in his own. "Jooheon," he said. "You have to marry this guy so I can have free sausage for the rest of my life."

Jooheon looked at him. Changkyun looked back.

"In hindsight," Changkyun said delicately, "I could have phrased that a little better. Anyway who's Jaehee?"

"My niece," Jooheon said. "She's three and she loves him, she made me make him a friendship bracelet with his name on it on Easter and makes my sister facetime me every day to ask me if I remember that I have to give it to him on Sunday. She’s decided that we’re gonna get married.”

Changkyun’s eyebrows went up. “Isn’t your family kinda traditional?”

“When my mom told her that boys don’t kiss boys she threw a fit because she’s been really into the Easter story and she remembered that Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus at the Garden of Olives, except she called it Olive Garden."

“Not really the best analogy there, kiddo, but I appreciate the effort. How the hell did you meet this guy?"

"I volunteered with him in the nursery of my parents' church on Easter Sunday," Jooheon said, and then said, "I _know_ ," when he saw the expression on Changkyun's face. "I know, okay?"

"If that meetcute was in a movie I wouldn't watch it."

"Don't lie."

Changkyun cackled a little to himself, covering his mouth with both hands. "You’re right, I totally would. I'd go see it once a week the whole time it was in theaters and throw popcorn at the screen every time. So are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Gonna give him the engagement bracelet you made him."

"Friendship bracelet," Jooheon corrected absently. "I mean - yeah, of course. Jaehee won't let me forget about it, for one thing, and I'm driving him to church tomorrow anyway."

Changkyun glared at him.

"What?"

"I hate you," Changkyun said, shaking his head. "That's all. I just hate you. How can you make being gay so fucking straight?"

“Just lucky I guess.” Jooheon sat back in his seat, scratching along one shoulder blade with the metal bars on the back. “I don’t know, man, like - like yeah I tried some stuff out in college but ‘trying stuff out’ is a lot different from asking for a guy’s number, you know?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Don’t be a dick, you know what I mean.”

"I don't," Changkyun said. "Seriously, I don't know what you mean. Are you weirded out because you don't think you're gay?"

"No, that’s—"

"Are you embarrassed about wanting to fuck him?"

"Shh! Man quiet down!"

"Then what is it?"

"I know I think guys are hot," Jooheon hissed across the table, watching a collection of college kids wander in with heavy backpacks, "that's not what I'm saying. I mean that I want to, like..."

"Like?"

"Like _date_ him," Jooheon said. "Like I want to be his boyfriend and do everything with him and, like, let him blow his nose in my hand if he cries during a movie—"

"That's fucking disgusting."

"—but then I get to the physical part of all this and there's this weird roadblock in my head," Jooheon finished. He set his head down on the table again, his forehead hitting the wood with a soft thump. "Do I just have a friend crush? Does that even happen?"

"If I had to guess," Changkyun said, "it's probably because you hate yourself."

"Asshole."

"What? That's what it always is." Changkyun reached across the table to pinch Jooheon's cheeks affectionately. "Don't worry, Honey, you're a beautiful squeezable bouncing baby boy and any nursery volunteer worth his waterproof smock would be lucky to have you."

"He's really fit," Jooheon said suddenly. "Like he's in shape and stuff. Like maybe he bikes everywhere and just always looks good no matter what."

"And that's... bad?"

"Yeah," Jooheon said, and then closed his mouth.

( _Aha_ , Changkyun thought to himself. _A clue_.)

"What?" was what he said out loud. "Are you worried you won't have anything in common?"

"No, I mean that he's hot," Jooheon said.

"Still not seeing the problem."

"He's _hot_ ," Jooheon repeated, tips of his ears going bright, lurid pink, "and I look like... myself."

Changkyun sat back. Looked at Jooheon in silence. Took a very deep breath. "You're gorgeous as fuck, idiot," he said, "now shut the hell up about it and then do us all a favor and go jump this guy."

"That's not what I want," Jooheon said. "That's what I've been telling you. I can't see myself - like, with - the two of us. Doing stuff together."

"So you don't want to fuck him?"

"No, okay? I don't. I’ve said that like—"

"Do you want him to fuck you?"

Silence settled over the table like a resentful cat.

"No," Jooheon croaked.

( _Aha_ , Changkyun thought to himself. _This isn't a clue, this is Jooheon, in the bedroom, with a dildo_.)

( _God_ , Jooheon thought to himself. _He probably thinks I have a dildo now_.)

"Honey..." Changkyun leaned forward and patted his hand supportively. "If you need somebody to go to a sex shop with you—"

"Stop thinking what you're thinking," Jooheon interrupted, jerking his hand back. "Or at least stop saying what you're thinking. I had something stuck in my throat. We're not talking about this."

"Are you asking me for advice or what?"

"No, that's not—" Jooheon stared down at the table. Was he? Was he going to Changkyun for advice? "I don't know. Whatever. What do you think?"

"Marry him yesterday and let him ravish you," Changkyun said. "What? Don't give me that look. You asked me what I thought and that's what I think. What's his name? Have you talked about how many kids you want?"

"His name’s Minhyuk," Jooheon said, "and—"

"Holy shit, he's even _Korean_." Changkyun moaned theatrically, eyes rolling back in his head in a distressingly accurate facsimile of an orgasm. "If only you were a girl, you would be the perfect filial son for boinking this guy."

"I know," Jooheon said. "My parents would be two for two."

“So do you have any photos? A selfie? An upskirt shot?” Changkyun glared at him. “Please tell me you at least looked him up on facebook.”

“Nobody uses facebook.”

“Liar,” Changkyun said. “Give me your phone, I’ll look him up on facebook for you.”

“I’m not going to give you my phone! Look him up on your own phone.”

“I don’t have facebook on my phone, now hand it over.”

“What, and I do?”

“I know you do. You checked your mom’s status right in front of me twenty minutes ago. Bummer about the drama in her quilting circle by the way, that Sandra Jane C. Finch-Smithers broad has way too many names to be in her right mind. What’s his family name?”

“Lee,” Jooheon said, handing the phone over in resignation. “Good luck. There are only a few million Lees in here.”

“Minhyuk Lee,” Changkyun mumbled to himself, scrolling intently. “Gimme a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”

About thirty seconds passed before Jooheon’s phone buzzed in Changkyun’s hand.

“What did you do,” Jooheon said.

“Just trying to get a photo of him,” Changkyun said casually, not looking up. “Wow, why didn’t you tell me that he’s got blond hair? He’s super cute, Honey. Does he live in the woods?”

“The woods?”

“Look,” Changkyun said, handing the phone back. “There’s a bunch of trees behind him.”

 

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“Oh my god,” Minhyuk cooed, stroking his phone case lovingly. “He’s so cute.”

He was sitting on the counter in the kitchen he shared with his flatmates, kicking his feet a little to bonk his heels rhythmically on the cabinets below. Hyungwon smacked him on the knee with a spatula. “Stop it,” he said. “You’re gonna dent the wood.”

“Look at my new friend!” Minhyuk shoved the phone into Hyungwon’s face. “I met him on Sunday, and look—”

Hyungwon fumbled for it and ended up dropping the spatula on the linoleum instead. “Yeah,” he said, peering at the screen. “You’ve mentioned him a few billion times. Did he send you this?”

“I have to send one back!” Minhyuk scrambled off the countertop and snatched the phone back from Hyungwon’s hands. “Hold on, hold on—”

The back door slammed behind him as Kihyun stuck his head into the kitchen. “Is he talking about Jooheon again? I heard kwiyeopda.”

“Jooheon sent a selca,” Hyungwon said in english, slipping the spatula under his grilled cheese sandwich in the pan and flipping it over. It was black. He glared at it but knew he’d eat it anyway. “Minnie went out to take one to send back.”

Kihyun stood in front of the kitchen sink with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Minhyuk flash several different selfie poses at his phone in quick succession. He opened the window. “Sexy wink,” he yelled. “Now a greasy wink. Cute wink. Finger heart.”

Hyungwon shuffled his half-burnt sandwich onto a plate and stood next to Kihyun in front of the window. “He’s good at that,” he said, mouth full of charcoal. “He should be a model.”

“Which one should I send?” yelled Minhyuk from the other side of the back patio. “Greasy wink?”

“Yes,” Hyungwon yelled back, spitting crumbs.

“What did he say?”

“He’s sending greasy wink,” Hyungwon said, finally choking on his bite.

“No,” Kihyun shouted, shoving Hyungwon aside. “Send the cute wink. Or the finger heart.”

“Too late!”

Hyungwon cackled, skin verging on green as he continued coughing into the sink. “I win.”

 

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“You sent him a photo of me?!”

“Yes,” Changkyun said, handing Jooheon’s phone back triumphantly. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you.” Jooheon snatched it back territorially. He looked at the screen. “Oh no,” he said.

“He’s cute,” Changkyun said again.

“He’s so cute,” Jooheon whined, slumping over. “Look at his face.”

“Hard not to.”

“I know, right?”

“Look at that face,” Changkyun said. (He didn’t have to. Jooheon’s eyes hadn’t moved from the screen since he’d first seen the selfie Minhyuk had sent back.) “I want you to look at that face.”

“I’m looking,” Jooheon said.

“Do you wanna kiss it?”

Jooheon opened his mouth. Jooheon closed his mouth. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“ _God_ ,” Changkyun groaned, rolling his eyes theatrically. “Just call and ask him if he wants to get dinner or something, this is physically painful to watch.”

Jooheon’s phone buzzed again. The text said _happy saturday!!!_ and included several emojis and god, Jooheon felt like maybe his heart had been replaced by cotton candy, or jello, or something else similarly insubstantial and wavering and so, so sweet. “Do you think I should?” he asked, but he was already typing something back that started with _are you busy?_

“Please.” Changkyun cupped his chin in his hands happily. “Aw. My baby’s all grown up and trawling for dick.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t say it like that.”

“Mhm. It’s good to want things.”

 

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“I grew up in Korea,” Minhyuk was saying, licking barbecue sauce delicately from each smeared fingertip. “I moved to the US maybe…” He muttered to himself. “Four years ago? Five?”

“I don’t want to overstep any bounds,” Jooheon said, “but your mom seems, like… super american.”

“Oh, she is!” Minhyuk laughed in a way that made his whole face squinch up into a rictus of endearing glee and Jooheon was utterly smitten by it, again, for nth time. “My dad’s family is in Korea and I was born there but when my parents split up they didn’t want to take me out of school.” He grinned, picking up another drumstick in his just-licked fingers. “But guess who’s got two thumbs and didn’t have to join the military.”

“Was it you?”

Minhyuk dropped the drumstick again to give himself an ecstatic high five. “It was me!”

They’d ended up meeting at a food cart pod in the northwest quarter (Jooheon dropping Changkyun off at a light rail station on the way over) and now Minhyuk was eating an entire half a chicken by himself, or trying to. It was spring and the sun was out but the air still had a nip to it that made Jooheon pull his sweatshirt tighter around himself and prompted Minhyuk to sidle up next to him on the bench at the picnic table they’d claimed in a back corner.

“This is for you,” Minhyuk said, touching Jooheon gently under the chin with his left hand and feeding him a bite of chicken with his right. He’d seen Minhyuk feeding Jaehee like this and for a second he wasn’t sure why it made him feel so damn warm. “Nyam nyam. Isn’t it good?”

“Mn,” Jooheon said, covering his mouth with one hand in a sudden rush of horrible self-awareness. “Yeah, s’good. You should eat the rest of it, I actually ate a little while ago.”

Minhyuk laughed, (squeaked, really - how could an adult man squeak-laugh like that and still be attractive?), and nudged Jooheon companionably in the ribs. “I got it to share! It’s good, and look, the smashed potatoes—”

The words “I’m trying to lose weight” tumbled out of Jooheon’s mouth before he could stop them. “Like,” he said, trying to stay calm, “you know. Candy season being over and everything, figured maybe it was time to—”

“ _Why_?!” When Jooheon looked up Minhyuk looked completely betrayed. “Have you _seen_ yourself?”

It was Jooheon’s turn to squeak-laugh, but in his case it wasn’t adorable so much as it was simply humiliating. “Yeah,” he said, laughter dying out as Minhyuk didn’t laugh with him. “Sorry?”

“Do whatever you want,” Minhyuk said, closing his eyes and taking long, slow breaths. “It’s your body. But also,” he added, opening one eye, “you’re fine, Honey.”

“Ha ha,” Jooheon said.

Minhyuk smiled at him, resting his chin in one hand and cocking his head to one side, and reached forward to brush a strand of hair behind Jooheon’s ear. “You’re fine,” he said again, and then made the face that came with every silly thing he’d said to a sunday school baby the week before and added, “ _damn_ fine,” in his sweet, raspy voice.

It would be nice to say that Jooheon remained cool and collected then, but unfortunately what happened was that he straightened up and turned toward Minhyuk so quickly that he knocked his can of coke over (cola splattering on his jeans) while at the same time opening his mouth and saying the words, “Do you want to come over? Rogue One is on Netflix and I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters.”

“Of course,” Minhyuk said. “We should stop by the store and grab some ramen while we’re at it.”

Jooheon blinked at him. From the look on Minhyuk’s face there was a joke here he wasn’t getting, but he didn’t know what to believe so he just went with it. “Sure,” he said.

Minhyuk laughed and squeaked and blew Jooheon a flurry of kisses. “Eat,” he said, turning to sit sideways on the picnic bench. “No ramen until you finish your chicken.”

 

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Hyungwon pulled his phone out of his pocket and peered blearily at the screen. “Minnie says Jooheon asked him over for netflix and ramen.”

Kihyun didn’t look up from his book, but he did take pause. “Is that anything like netflix and chill?”

“It…” Hyungwon lay back down on the couch, staring at the ceiling and trying to find the english words to explain the nuances of _do you want to eat ramen_ to a third generation Korean-American. “I guess,” he said finally.

“Great,” Kihyun said, flipping a page disagreeably. “Just like him to fuck his goy on shabbat when he _knows_ my phone is off.”

“What’s a goy?”

“Seriously? Every pesach you eat my matzah pizza without complaint—”

 

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Minhyuk blew him another several kisses on their way back to Jooheon’s car, scattered among dozens of others that Minhyuk blew to every child and dog and cat and cyclist they passed, each more hilarious than the last until Jooheon had to lean against the warm metal of his car to catch his breath before he could drive. “You have to stop,” he said, massaging his face. “I’m serious, this is - why is this so fucking funny?”

All he got was a wink and another kiss blown across the roof of his car before Minhyuk opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat.

(In the back of Jooheon’s head Changkyun was saying _Look at that face. Do you want to kiss it?_ )

Minhyuk had already started fumbling with the aux cord by the time Jooheon got into the car, lips pursing studiously and brow furrowed as he carefully stuck the plug into his phone. He looked up at around the same time Jooheon was buckling his seatbelt. “How do you feel,” he said, “about Carly Rae Jepsen?”

“Ambivalent,” Jooheon said.

“I’ll put on Cut To The Feeling, then. Wow, are these seat warmers?”

The thing about Minhyuk was that he was already the oldest friend Jooheon had ever had, slipping perfectly into his life like something he’d never known he’d been missing. He took over the aux cord without asking and blasted bubblegum pop through Jooheon’s car. He did every dance move possible, rolling windows down when necessary. He talked to Jooheon about his family, asked questions, acted genuinely interested and actually curious.

In the grocery store Minhyuk put a few of everything they found in the ramen section into the cart and managed to pay for all of it by literally pointing at something behind Jooheon and going “Oh my god what’s that!” and then handing his card to the cashier while Jooheon’s unbelievably gullible back was turned. In the parking garage under Jooheon’s apartment building he took advantage of the superior acoustics to regale Jooheon with a medley of Disney songs, spinning through the empty space with one ramen-laden bag in each hand.

In front of Jooheon’s apartment door Minhyuk kissed his hand and pressed it gently to Jooheon’s cheek. “Your face is warm,” he said, grocery bags full of ramen forgotten on the floor so that he could reach up to cup Jooheon’s cheeks in both hands. “My hands are cold.”

“We should, uh,” Jooheon said, eloquence personified. “W-we should go inside and warm up.”

Minhyuk seemed to consider this for a moment. “How do you feel,” he said for the second time that day, “about going inside and warming up by kissing a lot?” Then he smiled, eyes curving. “No pressure! I just think you’re pretty and I’d like to kiss you.”

(Look at that face. Do you wanna kiss it? _Yes_ , was what he hadn’t said, _but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t want to kiss me._ )

“Wow,” Minhyuk cooed. “Now your face is _really_ warm.”

“Let’s start by going inside,” Jooheon said, scrambling for his keys.

 

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“No. No. I got it. Text him to ask if he’s found his dream goy.”

“That’s only funny to you, Kihyun.”

 

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When Minhyuk kissed Jooheon for the first time they hadn’t even taken their jackets off yet, standing on the textured linoleum of Jooheon’s entryway among a mess of shoes with Jooheon’s sweatshirt pushed off his shoulders down to his elbows and Minhyuk’s hands on his waist. (Later they would bicker over who kissed who first, but in the moment neither of them paid enough attention to tell.)

Jooheon was soft under Minhyuk's hands, against his mouth, lips parting with an almost inaudible _pop_ to welcome him in. “Is this okay?” Minhyuk murmured, pulling away enough to brush the tips of their noses together. Instead of speaking Jooheon just chased after him, catching up with a kiss as his only answer.

They made it to the sofa, but only barely, Minhyuk helping Jooheon with his sweatshirt and leaving it on the floor in the hallway. Jooheon tripped over himself and fell backward, landing at the very edge of the couch cushion, and Minhyuk laughed at him (laughed at him!) before sliding in to straddle his hips, taking Jooheon’s face in both hands and tipping it up to kiss him even deeper.

Before Minhyuk Jooheon had never given much thought to thighs beyond the obvious, but when Minhyuk straddled him Jooheon found himself wondering distantly if he could crush his head between those thighs and also, of course, if he would.

“I _knew_ ,” Minhyuk whispered, triumph in his voice. “I knew you’d be fun to kiss.”

 

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When Jaehee showed up at the nursery on the Sunday morning following Easter it was with her dad, slung over his hip again but significantly less frilly and pastel. “Where’s Minnie,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She was a queen, and this was her queendom.

She found him with his hands inside a toy barn, a much smaller boy squatting next to him weeping inconsolably over a small plastic pig that had gotten stuck in the garage. (“It’s really in here, buddy. Gimme just a minute.”)

Jaehee marched up and waiting graciously until Minhyuk completed his task before holding out her hand imperiously, palm up in demand. “Lemme see it.”

“The pig?”

“No! Honey’s bracelet!”

Minhyuk surrendered his left wrist as commanded. “Pretty nice, huh?” He smiled down at her. “Tell me the truth. Did Honey actually make this or did he ask you to do it? It’s too pretty to be his.”

She gave him a look writ large with the utmost horror. “No,” she said, shocked to her core. “Honey made this for you.”

“Did you help pick the colors?”

Jaehee pursed her lips and reached out to play with the tied off ends of the embroidery floss. “No,” she said after a second. “He wouldn’t let me.”

Minhyuk gasped theatrically, bringing one hand to his mouth. “What? He didn’t _let_ you? What a bad Honey. Did he say why?”

She slipped her chubby little fingers under the bracelet and brushed at the weave, dark gray and blue and streaks of orange, yellow, white. “When the sun comes up,” she said. “Before breakfast.” ( _Bweakfast_. Minhyuk could see Jooheon’s mouth in his mind’s eye.)

There was a second where Minhyuk wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh, or coo over Jaehee’s small hand, or, possibly, melt into a puddle of infatuated goo. He decided to shoot for the laugh. “That’s so nice. Because it was Easter, right?”

“No,” she said for the third time. (It was amazing. Three no’s from a two year old and no screaming.) She furrowed her brow and looked at him like she was trying to make a decision. “Just when the sun comes up.”

 

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It was raining hard enough that Minhyuk got soaked just running from the doors of the narthex out over the small front courtyard and into Jooheon’s car, screaming like a displeased dolphin as he scrambled for the door handle.

“I have the heat turned all the way up,” Jooheon said as Minhyuk tumbled into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. “Hold on, I grabbed some towels on my way out the door, they’re in the back--”

Minhyuk laughed, trying and failing to wipe long trails of rain from his face with equally wet hands. “You brought towels but you didn’t grab an umbrella?”

“Only tourists and transplants use umbrellas. Here, this is the fluffiest one.”

“I’m from Korea,” Minhyuk sighed into the towel and scrubbed it over his head. “Next time bring this transplant an umbrella. I’ll forgive you this time,” he added quickly, pulling the towel off his head to flash Jooheon a brilliant smile. “But _next time_ you’ll be in trouble.”

Minhyuk’s bleached blond hair stood up in all directions like he’d been electrocuted in a cartoon, sticking up crimped and a little tangled and very, very gravity defying, and Jooheon (who had, over the past week, grown at least one poetic bone) thought that he looked almost exactly like what a sun god should look like. “Okay, okay,” he said, face hot with embarrassment. “In my defense it was only drizzling when I left my place.”

“I need to put these clothes in the wash as soon as I get home,” Minhyuk sighed, plucking at his normally fluffy blue sweater. “I wore them for two days straight and then they got rained on.”

“I have a washer and dryer at my apartment,” Jooheon said.

“That’s nice,” Minhyuk said.

“And I owe you breakfast anyway since you bought literally everything last night,” Jooheon said.

“Yeah," Minhyuk said. "Hey, do you wanna go kiss some more while my clothes are in the dryer?”

“Oh,” Jooheon said, slumping dramatically. “Thank god.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was already thinking about this but then they got their first win and minhyuk CRIED and i ALSO cried and then finished this faster than i expected, through tears

“Ggyunnie says you’ve got gossip but he won’t tell me what it is.”

“Good morning, Hoseok,” Jooheon said, sipping at his mug. Somebody had put two packets of pre-ground coffee into the filter at some point earlier that morning and honestly that might have been all right had it not been mass produced dark french roast that came pre-burnt for customer convenience. He sloshed in a little more french vanilla creamer, staging his own miniature French Revolution. “How’s work?”

“The usual,” Hoseok said happily, setting his collection of reusable containers on the counter in the break room. Jooheon had been his cubicle neighbor for a little over a year now and he didn’t need to ask what he was eating anymore, because it was  _ always  _ hard-boiled eggs and fresh cut fruit. “Have you checked your email yet?”

Jooheon briefly took pause, mind working like the frenzied movement underneath a duck floating calmly on the surface of a pond. Hoseok was (technically) his supervisor and  _ have you checked your email yet _ could mean all kinds of different potentially horrible things.

“No,” he hazarded after a second.

Hoseok coughed out a laugh, rolling his eyes in an expression of wry humor. “Manufacturing shipped out an entire lot of 86-40s that don’t have battery casings installed,” he said. He wiggled his eyebrows and spread his hands out wide in a half-hearted full body shrug. “Guess who’s gonna be doing the alert calls!”

“You’re shitting me. When?”

“First packages got delivrred yesterday.” Hoseok pulled the first lid off of his tupperware, revealing a bunch of strawberries that had been carefully hulled and halved. It was real tupperware, none of that gladware shit. Tupperware **®** . Hoseok, in Jooheon’s opinion, was a force to be reckoned with. “Manufacturing didn’t even realize until the first few calls came in today, apparently.”

“Wasn’t Brad getting on you literally  _ yesterday _ about the incident reports?”

“Karma is delicious,” Hoseok sighed, an expression of pure bliss on his face. “He came groveling to me this morning. I asked him if it was better or worse than an incident report backlog and he turned red.”

“Did you ask him why an extra lot of battery casing parts in his inventory didn’t set off any alarm bells?” Jooheon sucked the last few drips of coffee from the bowl of his plastic spoon before tossing it expertly into the trash. “Please tell me you did and that you also got a photo of his face when he was trying to figure out how to answer.”

Hoseok slapped one hand to his chest in an expression of faux horror. “Do you really think I would willingly put the face of cishet white boy on my personal mobile device?”

“Chris Pine,” Jooheon said.

“He doesn’t count,” Hoseok said.

“Hmm,” Jooheon said.

“I’m supposed to tell you to get to work--”

“Nice subject change.”

“--but if you tell me your gossip I’ll make a sign banning people from putting two packets of grounds into the coffee maker.”

“Signs don’t work,” Jooheon scoffed.

But Hoseok leaned in and spoke those three little words. “I’ll laminate it,” he whisper beguilingly.

“I’ve been seeing this guy,” Jooheon said immediately, staring into a blissful future full of coffee that didn’t flay his insides all the way down. ( _ All _ the way down.)

Hoseok physically took a hard-boiled egg he’d been about to bite out of his mouth. “You what?” he said.

“I met a guy and we’ve been on a couple dates,” Jooheon said. He tried not to focus on the look of stricken shock on Hoseok’s face because if he did he’d start feeling stupid and then it would just be entire pints of ice cream and soggy repeat viewings of The Notebook for weeks. “That’s all the gossip there is.”

“Oh my god,” Hoseok whispered. He was standing there still holding a slightly gnawed hard-boiled egg aloft and watching Jooheon like he’d just discovered a hitherto unknown species of flower. “Are you going full gay?”

“You’ve been talking to Changkyun too much. He’s just a guy, I’m seeing him, that’s all.”

Hoseok made a face and stuffed the entire egg into his mouth. “I support your choices,” he said after a few pensive chews.

Jooheon took a long, slow breath. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it. Then he said, “I haven’t told my parents,” for no reason other than that they were the next words he had to say. “I tell my mom almost everything but I haven’t told her about this.”

“You can share my mom,” Hoseok offered. “She darned the hole in my favorite mesh top last night.”

“Do you ever think it’s weird that we know so much about our coworkers’ private lives? I feel like that might be weird.”

“We knew each other before we were coworkers, Honey.” Hoseok turned, heading out of the break room. “Your new boyfriend better be good to you. I’ll break my pacifist vows if he needs a good punch in the face, you just give me a call.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jooheon protested weakly, trailing along behind him. “We’re just seeing each other.”

“I believe you,” Hoseok sang.

  
  


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Kihyun flopped bonelessly onto the couch. “So how’s Jooheon?”

“Beautiful,” Minhyuk gushed, looking up from his phone.

“No,” Kihyun gasped, holding one hand to his mouth in faux shock as he hit the power button on the remote with the other. “You don’t say.  _ How _ is he? Don’t dodge it, you’re smiling at your phone and that can only mean that what you’re doing is Jooheon-related.” He paused for a second. “Speaking of doing things. Have you boned your new boyfriend yet?”

“No,” was what Minhyuk said, and then he said, “Oh my god.”

“It’s that shocking that you haven’t fucked him?”

“We haven’t had the boyfriend talk,” Minhyuk hissed, sitting upright stiff and straight like a board. “Is he my boyfriend? Are we boyfriends? Do we just kiss a lot?” He flopped over on his side, still clutching his phone to his chest. “My life is a lie,” he whispered into the couch cushions.

“I’m gonna watch the Nanny,” Kihyun said.

Minhyuk sat up again. “ _ Ki _ hyun. I am having a crisis.”

“No you’re not.” ( _ She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens-- _ ) “Fran Drescher is a goddess, you know that?”

“Yes! This is a crisis! What if Jooheon doesn’t want to be boyfriends?” ( _ She had style, she had flair, she was there— _ ) Minhyuk held his phone to his chest in an expression of premature grief. “Kihyun. What if Jooheon doesn’t want to be my boyfriend.”

Kihyun heaved a sigh and paused the theme song. “Tell you what,” he said. “If you have the boyfriend talk with Jooheon and he  _ doesn’t _ want to be boyfriends I won’t nag you to do your dishes for a week.”

“Two weeks.”

“This isn’t open to barter. One week.”

“One week of no dishes isn’t worth the risk,” Minhyuk said. “What if I’m heartbroken, Kihyun? What if all I can do is lie in bed slowly surrendering to consumption. What then? You’ll nag your expiring best friend after only 7 days?” He opened his eyes wide. “You  _ monster _ .”

“Fine,” Kihyun said. “A month. A whole month, all right? There’s no way I’m losing this bet.”

Minhyuk pouted. “How can you be so confident?”

“Because I have eyeballs. Shut up, Niles is about to deliver an epic burn.”

  
  
  


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Jooheon’s phone yelled at him to pick up and he almost had a heart attack in traffic. The word  _ yell _ was literal, as his older sister had taken it upon herself to record a very special ringtone just for when she was calling him and it was pretty much just  _ PICK UP THE PHONE IT’S ME YOUR SISTER _ over and over and over until she gave in or he did.

“Soojin,” he said, tapping the answer button on the side of his steering wheel, hitting his turn signal to get out of the exit-only lane. “I’m gonna change your ringtone.”

“I’ll just record it again,” Soojin replied through his car’s speakers. “I’m not too proud to send Jaehee after your phone. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”

“I can’t believe you would use your own child to carry out theft.”

“She’s too cute to be arrested  _ and _ she doesn’t have to testify against me. It’s the perfect plan.”

“Enough about your repeat felonies,” Jooheon said, finally zipping past the fender bender on the side of the highway that had, apparently, caused the entire 20 minute delay. ( _ People are so stupid _ , Jooheon thought to himself, riding the brake just a tiny bit longer than he had to in order to check out the scene. The irony was lost on him.) “What’s up?”

“Just calling to check in on my favorite brother.”

“Aw,” Jooheon cooed, “you’re my favorite sister too! But really. What’s up.”

There was a moment of hushed quiet. “Soojin?” Jooheon hazarded. “It’s not nice to call me and then when I ask what’s up to go quiet. What’s going on? Did somebody die?” He clenched his hands tight on the steering wheel. “Should I pull over?”

“Nobody  _ died _ ,” Soojin scoffed. “Stop freaking out.”

“Too late!”

“It’s Jaehee,” his older sister said. “I mean she’s fine,” she tacked on quickly, “don’t worry, it’s not that. She just, uh…”

“What?”

“She keeps asking when you and that guy from church are gonna get married.”

Quiet.

“Huh,” Jooheon croaked. “Wonder where she got that idea.”

“Well you did ask for his number, make him a friendship bracelet, and pick him up from church.” Soojin’s voice was way too smug. 

He’d had a very long day at work (Brad From Manufacturing was already being a piece of shit again, having conveniently forgotten that incident report backlogs don’t get any better when tech support has to clean up  _ somebody’s _ mess) and traffic was bad and he hadn’t been able to get Hoseok’s “are you going full gay?” out of his head since Tuesday morning and Soojin was way, way too smug.

“So?” he said, the very embodiment of eloquence.

“Nothing,” Soojin said then, after a millisecond of hesitation. “I just wanted to tell you that Jaehee ships you two more than I  _ ever _ shipped Larry--”

“Oh my god. Don’t make me relive that.”

“--And that, like…”

Jooheon’s chest felt tight. “He’s not my boyfriend,” he said, tongue twisting on the words a little. Mostly it was the word  _ boyfriend _ that confused his mouth the most. He’d been a boyfriend but never had one and, honestly, had never thought he would.

“But it’s fine if he is,” Soojin said, the words coming out all at once. “If he were. If you two were something. Honey, are you still there? Jooheon?”

“He’s not,” Jooheon said, getting his voice back. “We’re not. But thanks for saying it.” He didn’t realize how choked up he was until he tried to laugh and it came out as a broken croak. “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t talk to mom and dad about this.”

“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” his sister said, because she was 100% straight and didn’t understand what it meant to tell your parents that you’re in a relationship with the wrong-shaped person and are therefore automatically a sexual deviant. “But of course I won’t. If anybody talks to them about it it’ll be you.” She hesitated. “Or Jaehee.”

“Jaehee decided that what happened in the Garden of Olives was Jesus’s wedding to Judas Iscariot, I'm not too worried about them taking her seriously.”

“Oh god. Do you know she’s started dressing up ken dolls in ripped tissue and rubber bands? It’s to reenact the Holy Matrimony at a widely popular Italian chain restaurant and I swear...”

“At least teach her about lesbians, Soojin.”

“She’s two years old, all I can do is work with what I’ve got!”

“Repeat after me: Luna and Hermione.”

“Harry Potter is too scary. She’s two, Honey.”

“Sailor Moon?”

Soojin hummed thoughtfully. “Not actually a bad idea. I’ll check it out.”

“Just don’t give her the dub where Haruka and Michiru are ‘cousins,’ there are few things creepier than knowing the truth even as the neo-Puritan American media is trying to feed you incest.”

“Don’t say things like to me, and of  _ course _ I’d get her an accurate dub. Who do you take me for? My mother?”

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Jooheon said, bumping his turn signal to turn into the parking garage under his apartment building.

“No you won’t. I’m keeping your new boyfriend a secret.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jooheon said again ( _ again _ ) but god, it was getting weaker with every repetition.

  
  


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Jooheon opened the door and immediately got a fistful of flowers to the face.

“Ow,” he said. (Whined, really.) “What the fuck?”

“I brought you flowers,” Minhyuk sang, pushing the offending flowers into Jooheon’s hands and swanning past him into the apartment. “Did you just wake up?”

“It’s 9 am on a Saturday,” Jooheon mumbled, blearily peering down at the flowers in his hands. “Why are these so wet?”

“It was raining when I left my house,” Minhyuk said, leaving his shoes on the linoleum on his way to the kitchen. “I shook them off after I cut them but it didn’t do much. Do you have any vases?”

Jooheon stood in his front hallway in bumblebee pajamas and held a bouquet of vibrantly pink rhododendrons in his hands and blinked sleep out of his eyes, closing the door and shuffling blearily after Minhyuk into the kitchen. Minhyuk already had three cupboards open and was about to open a fourth when he came in, digging through the deepest recesses of Jooheon’s kitchen as though that weren’t a potentially life threatening activity in and of itself.

He turned and held up the product of his search. “Can I use this?”

“That’s my grandma’s silver pitcher.”

Minhyuk blinked a few times, none of the muscles shifting in his smile. “So is that a yes?”

It occurred to Jooheon that the only thing he’d ever done with it was stick it in the back of a cabinet, and maybe there were worse things that could happen to a silver pitcher than being used to hold flowers. “Sure,” he said after a second. “Yeah, go ahead. Have you had breakfast?”

Thunder rolled outside, far away but still loud enough for both of them to look up and out the window, Minhyuk sloshing water around the pitcher to get the dust out and Jooheon standing next to him at the sink. Jooheon definitely didn’t scream even a tiny bit when Minhyuk nudged him in the ribs, because he was a man, and men aren’t scared of things like distant thunder.

“I think it’s heading this way,” Jooheon said, opening the window to press his cheek to the screen and peer up at the sky.

Minhyuk pulled him away from the window and blotted at his face with a damp paper towel. “You’re all dusty from the screen,” he said after a second, glancing up to see Jooheon’s expression.

“Neat,” Jooheon said.

They’d kissed already. They’d kissed a  _ lot _ , actually, the kind of long, lazy makeout session that Jooheon hadn’t had since he was seventeen. It wasn’t like any of those, of course, he was an adult now and knew things about bodies that might not have occurred to a furiously blushing sixteen year old with his hand up one Suzie Ferguson’s shirt, not that Jooheon had ever done that. (It was at a church youth group retreat and she’d made him promise not to tell. Plus she called him  _ Jew Hone _ . It was a somewhat lacking experience.) 

The problem was that kissing was pretty much the only thing they’d done. They did so as frequently and enthusiastically as possible, obviously, because Minhyuk kept being himself and Jooheon struggled daily with how Minhyuk’s self was one of the best things he could think of, but during all those makeout sessions Minhyuk’s hands usually hovered around his waist. Never lower, never higher. They’d gone the furthest the first time they kissed and hadn’t returned to those heights since.

Minhyuk blotted at his face with a paper towel, mouth pursed and brows knit together in concentration as he delicately wiped away the dust from the window screen. They were really close together and Minhyuk smelled like something almost citrus and Jooheon wondered to himself if he had the guts to say anything.

“Did you say something about breakfast?” Nope. Nada. No guts to be found anywhere.

Minhyuk laughed at him, (laughed at him!), and tipped in to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “What do you say,” he said, barely an inch away, “to me making you some coffee?”

“Please?”

“ _ And _ thank you,” Minhyuk sang, spinning away toward Jooheon’s coffee maker at the other end of the counter.

“And thank you,” Jooheon sang back, forgetting himself, following Minhyuk across the linoleum to slip his hands around Minhyuk’s waist and tuck the tip of his nose against the little divot at the nape of his neck.

Minhyuk stopped breathing, just for a second. “Are we boyfriends?”

The storm took this opportunity to send a blast of wind rattling in the gutters and they both jumped as the screen on the kitchen window started coming off at one corner, pushing through the tight window frame to flap uselessly under the onslaught.

“Fuck,” Jooheon said, and it was only  _ mostly _ about the window. “Shit, help me--”

It was a struggle, but together they managed to get the screen out of the way enough to shut the window, leaving the wind outside to whistle and scream all it wanted. “You might lose the screen,” Minhyuk said, standing back, breathless, wringing his hands together to warm them up. “I really just came over for breakfast but it’s really bad out there, do you, um…”

“You can stay,” Jooheon said, “as long as you want.”

“We don’t have to be boyfriends,” Minhyuk said, his accent arcing sweetly over the word  _ friends _ . “I’m just curious what you thought.” He cleared his throat and gestured vaguely between them, not looking up to meet Jooheon’s eyes. “About this. Us.”

Jooheon had been a boyfriend a lot. He was actually really good at being a boyfriend: he knew how calendars worked and could be trusted to never forget a birthday, he’d never once burned down anyone’s kitchen, and he had a steady enough job. He’d been a boyfriend but never had one and, honestly, had never thought he would - but now Minhyuk was standing in front of him, pink and worried, and  _ wow  _ did Jooheon suddenly really want a boyfriend.

“Yeah,” he said. “No. Yes, we have to be boyfriends. Are you kidding?” He’d denied it god knew how many times but screw it, screw everything, he really wanted to kiss Minhyuk for what felt like the rest of his life and denying it now would possibly actually really kill him. Jooheon reached out like an idiot and folded Minhyuk’s hands in his own. “I mean - we don’t  _ have to _ \--"

“Do you want us to be?” asked Minhyuk.

“I mean,” Jooheon said, “like it’s - I don’t know--”

“I would love to be your boyfriend,” Minhyuk interrupted, squinching up his face delightedly and poking Jooheon in the cheek right where his dimple was when he smiled. Then he leaned in and kissed him again, which was really too much.

“Same,” Jooheon mumbled, his voice and heart both caught in Minhyuk’s breath.

  
  


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“Oh god  _ damn _ it.”

“What?”

“I just remembered that I have to do my own dishes for a month.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do people think if i change the rating of this fic so i can, uh, write about this relationship in more detail?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hand slipped. don't look at this if you don't like smut

Minhyuk moaned, stretching and arching as he rutted up against Jooheon’s thigh. Jooheon tucked his face in close against the hollow where Minhyuk’s shoulder met his neck, nosing at the steady thump of Minhyuk’s electric pulse, kissing his throat, laughing when Minhyuk whined.

“You smell good,” Jooheon murmured, so close that the damp on his lips caught at Minhyuk’s skin as he spoke. He rolled his hips right back, dragging slowly up Minhyuk’s leg.

The only response Minhyuk could come up with was a rough, high pitched _ah_ when Jooheon slid one hand up under his shirt, dragging hot fingertips along his ribs as he pulled the shirt up, and Jooheon could do this for hours. He _had_ done it for hours, every afternoon and evening they could fit into their respective schedules over the past several weeks, but this time felt a little different because a week ago they’d mutually agreed to be Boyfriends and now it felt a lot less like playing around and a lot more like playing to win.

Sunlight was arcing in low through Jooheon’s blinds, lining Minhyuk’s body with long beams of dusk pink and orange sunset. His skin looked like it should taste like honeyed fruit, grapefruit and orange sweetened and thick, and god he smelled delicious.

“Here’s an idea,” Minhyuk breathed, looping his arm over Jooheon’s neck to pull himself closer as he rocked up jerkily against Jooheon’s hip, “you just fuck me.”

“I don’t have anything here,” Jooheon said, taking a deep breath in a strange mix of horniness and regret. “And like - we haven’t really talked about it—” Minhyuk whimpered a little bit, grinding against him. “—but mostly I don’t have anything here,” he finished, breath catching in his throat with his last word as Minhyuk palmed his dick through his boxers.

“Let’s talk about it,” Minhyuk said, stroking unsteadily as Jooheon’s breath picked up. “I think it’s a great idea. What - w-what do you think? Fuck,” he added to the end, the word hissed through his teeth as Jooheon’s dick responded to his touch. “Fuck,” he mumbled again, slumping a little as he tightened his grip, as Jooheon gasped and rutted forward into the heat of Minhyuk’s palm.

It was the line. He’d drawn it in college ( _No butt stuff_ , he’d said, and Changkyun had laughed at him) and since graduation he’d never felt the need to review his old rules - mostly because Changkyun assumed he’d gone back to the Full Straight of his high school days and treated him thus.

But he’d still drawn it and he’d never really considered the possibility of reaching beyond his very rigid boundaries, so when Minhyuk asked Jooheon what he thought Jooheon opened his mouth and said, “Yeah,” and it wasn’t even kind of a lie. “Yeah,” he repeated, tongue thick in his mouth. “Actually that sounds really _really_ good.”

Minhyuk laughed, a hoarse, gasping thing that hitched as he rutted against Jooheon’s thigh. “‘Actually’?” he murmured. “‘Yeah, actually’?” He stretched, the light coming in through the window rippled over his skin as he moved. “Are you trying to say you’ve never thought about fucking me?”

“Shut up,” Jooheon said, pushing up onto one elbow and sliding his hand up and over Minhyuk’s ribcage, pulling him close, dragging him up Jooheon’s leg almost to his hip. (Minhyuk was so hard, hard in a way that made something ache deep in the pit of his stomach, deep enough to nestle strangely in his pelvis.)

“Hold on,” Minhyuk whispered, eyes almost but not quite shut, his lashes threading together. “You’ve never thought about it?”

The ache in Jooheon’s stomach pulsed, snippets of dreams flickering across his mind’s eye in which (maybe) he was face down on a bed. “I—”

“I have,” Minhyuk said. He opened his eyes, pupils so wide his eyes looked almost black. The tip of his slick pink tongue flickered out to wet his chapped lips. “Full disclosure.”

“Oh,” said Jooheon, who had only just started down that particular thought railroad. The tracks were dark, confusing, but once the train started there was no going back and _god_ the thought of it was way, way more welcoming than it had even been before.

“We don’t have to, though, there are a lot of different things we could do.”

“Yeah?” It was hard not to kiss along Minhyuk’s jawline, so he didn’t spend any effort on trying. He didn’t taste at all like honeyed fruit; he tasted like skin and cologne and the tang of coital sweat, which was way, way better. “Like what?”

“Well,” Minhyuk groaned, arching up again as Jooheon nipped lightly at the line of his throat, curving to meet Jooheon’s hand on his waist. “This is a pretty good start.”

“Mhm.” The ache in the pit of his stomach wasn’t getting any better. It was heavier now, hotter, (lower), and the only label he could think of for it was _want._ It didn’t make any sense but still, he wanted. “What else is there?”

Minhyuk scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Right. Because you’re so innocent.”

“I wanna know what you like, sue me.”

“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” Minhyuk quipped, still breathless, cheeks pink, dick hard in his loose puppy-print boxers. (They were blue and covered in little cartoon drawings of dachshunds. Jooheon hadn’t expected to be quite so endeared, but then again life is an adventure and one learns new things every day.) He looked briefly confused, lips shining with spit. “Blowjobs are nice,” he croaked.

“Oh,” said Jooheon. “You know what? You’re right.”

He’d learned a lot of things during his stint as a College Bisexual, including that he had what some had referred to as Dick Sucking Lips. (Initially he’d just been told he had DSL, which didn’t make any sense at the time. Later Changkyun had the decency to fill him in.) He’d only sucked a few dicks in college and hadn’t gotten much out of it besides a sore jaw and a nasty, bitter taste in the back of his throat that wouldn’t go away for what felt like hours, but it had at least made him better appreciate the effort that goes into it.

Jooheon thought about Minhyuk sucking his dick, which was really nice. Then Jooheon thought about sucking Minhyuk’s dick and the ache in his pelvis throbbed like it was trying to tell him something. “I’ve only given a couple blowjobs,” he said. “And that was years ago—”

“I don’t mind giving,” Minhyuk interrupted.

“—So I’ll need some practice,” Jooheon finished.

This time it was Minhyuk’s turn to say, “Oh.” His hips had slowed to a stop during their conversation but rocked forward again as he exhaled a tight, thick breath. He felt huge against Jooheon’s thigh, but then again so had a lot of people, and anyway it wasn’t like size mattered in this context. (Except it kind of did, for some reason.) “Practice, huh? Do you - how many—”

“A few,” Jooheon said, feeling the embarrassment start to squirm up his spine. “It’s not important.”

“Did you like it?” Minhyuk’s eyes fluttered shut as he moved. It seemed almost purposeful now, like he was chasing after something in particular. “You - your mouth—”

“Yeah.” It was kind of a lie, because he’d been ambivalent leaning towards negative back when he’d been hooking up briefly with a bunch of “bi-curious” guys who were looking for some kind of Cool Kid Card, getting a little bit of homo experience to pick up straight girls wearing rainbow crop tops at a gay bar. But then again how ambivalent could he be? He’d started salivating the second Minhyuk had uttered the word _blowjob_ and his immediate thought hadn’t been ‘gross,’ it had been ‘holy shit.’ “Yeah, I think I like it.”

“You look like you’d be good at it,” Minhyuk breathed, gasped, brows knitting together and his hand tightening on Jooheon’s waist, holding him steady. “Your mouth…”

“Dick sucking lips,” Jooheon said. He’d meant it as a joke but it came out in a strangled whisper and when he said it Minhyuk moaned, arched, gasped out the word _yes_ —

Jooheon hesitated. “... Did you just get off?”

“No,” Minhyuk said, eventually. He curled in and tucked his face into Jooheon’s pillow. “Of course not.”

“You did,” Jooheon said, pushing up onto one elbow. “You came in your boxers.”

“You said ‘dick sucking lips,’” Minhyuk whined. “I promise I’m not normally that fast, it just—”

“It’s fine,” Jooheon interrupted, and then he laughed because he couldn’t not. The tips of Minhyuk’s ears were bright red and he was still breathing a little bit faster than normal and god, really? He’d come in his pants like a teenager? “Really, it’s fine. It’s adorable.”

“I could suck you off,” Minhyuk murmured, looking up, smiling, blinking sleepily. He looked a little bit dazed, flushed and overheated. “It’s the least I can do.”

Jooheon opened his mouth, at which point his phone took the opportunity to yell _PICK UP THE PHONE IT’S ME YOUR SISTER_ at him from the pocket of his jeans, which he’d left on the floor next to his bed.

“Hold that thought,” he said, rolling over to scramble for his phone. “Fuck—”

“Are you okay down there?”

He rejected the call and then turned his phone off altogether, swearing quietly to himself as he struggled to get back up onto the mattress. “Jaehee said she was going to call me before dinner today. I expected her to forget.”

Minhyuk giggled, flopping over onto Jooheon’s lap. “What, and you didn’t pick up? What if she has pressing business?” He wriggled a little, nuzzling against the cool cotton of Jooheon’s boxers, pushing the tip of his nose into the give of Jooheon’s thigh and mouthing at the fabric. “You don’t think that matters?”

“Fuck,” Jooheon groaned, reaching out to palm the back of Minhyuk’s head but pulling back at the last second, choosing to instead grip down hard on the comforter that had been twisted between them for over an hour. “What about me? I have pressing business too, my boyfriend is - ohmy _god_ —”

Minhyuk sucked sweetly at the head of Jooheon’s dick, still with the boxers between them, licking up the salt of precum and breathing hot over the spit-damp fabric. He looked up when Jooheon spoke, smiled, dragged his tongue up the curve of Jooheon’s length. “Oh your god what?” he murmured, scooting up to nose at the elastic waistband of Jooheon’s boxers. “Up.”

It took a minute for Jooheon to remember to be embarrassed by how easily he obeyed Minhyuk’s commands, but by then Minhyuk had pulled his boxers off to leave him in just his hoodie (and socks, why was he wearing socks) and curved in to press a soft, open-mouthed kiss just under the head of his dick.

“Oh my god,” Jooheon said again, whispered it, leaning back against the headboard to watch. He felt almost drunk, like he was having some kind of hallucination, like he was living out one of those heated and barely-remembered dreams. Minhyuk’s eyes flickered up. Their gazes locked, and Minhyuk moaned deep in his throat as he sank down Jooheon’s length, slicking it from tip to base.

Jooheon had been single for at least six months, during which time he’d received roughly zero blowjobs, (an occupational hazard), but even with that level of emotional distance he was still pretty sure that blowjobs weren’t usually this goddamn good. The size of Minhyuk’s mouth was the punchline to a lot of jokes - mostly jokes cracked by his friend Kihyun, come to think of it - but it wasn’t a joke at all when Minhyuk sucked him all the way down to nose affectionately at Jooheon’s pubic hair.

“This should be illegal,” he groaned, hips moving involuntarily as Minhyuk’s tongue worked. “Holy fuck, this should be illegal.”

Minhyuk pulled off, eyes fluttering shut as he steadied the base with one hand to lick lazily all the way around the ridge. The last dregs of sunset light caught in the tiny pinpoints of sweat on his forehead and Jooheon reached out to turn on his bedside lamp, loath to miss any of it.

“Been wanting to do this for ages,” Minhyuk murmured, lips dragging on the skin of Jooheon’s dick. His voice was always rough but just right then he was practically hoarse - throat tight and tongue heavy in his mouth. “Your cock is _so_ pretty, Honey.”

“Pretty?” Minhyuk nodded and then sucked him back in. Jooheon’s head fell back and hit the headboard with a dull thud. “F-fuck.”

“All of you is pretty,” Minhyuk murmured, pulling off again to talk. He didn’t neglect Jooheon by any means, his hand sliding up and down his length with precum and saliva to slick it, but in the moment Jooheon felt the loss of Minhyuk’s mouth like the point of a knife. He nosed at the line where Jooheon’s thigh met his hip, brushed his lips over the skin, laughed at himself as he glanced up with delighted and curving eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Jooheon thought about saying something before Minhyuk sucked the head of his dick into his mouth - suckling at it, massaging just under the ridge with the tip of his tongue - but at that point Jooheon stopped thinking about anything.

He made noise when he came, rutting up into the wet heat of Minhyuk’s mouth and holding onto the mattress for dear life. He didn’t usually make that much noise but this time he couldn’t hold it back; he didn’t even realize that he’d even moaned until he heard his own voice crying out Minhyuk’s name. Between his legs Minhyuk groaned too, stroked him, swallowed through the orgasm until Jooheon was gasping and whining with over stimulation, begging for a break by way of gently nudging at Minhyuk’s temple because he didn’t have the words for anything else.

The sun had gone down. There were no lines of pink and purple and orange on Minhyuk’s skin anymore, just the shine of perspiration reflecting light from Jooheon’s bedside lamp, and as he shifted carefully from between Jooheon’s thighs to beside him he looked like a demi-god, shimmering with a holy glow. His mouth was pink, lips spit slick and a little bit swollen; the color was high in his cheeks; he was a god.

“I like you,” Minhyuk murmured, looking a little bit dazed and a little bit giddy and maybe a tiny bit too tired. He grunted, rolling and adjusting to slip one hand over Jooheon’s waist and snuggle up under his arm. “That was nice.”

“Yeah,” Jooheon croaked, looping his arm around Minhyuk’s shoulders. “Jesus. How did you learn to do that?”

“I’m an empath,” Minhyuk replied. “That was my first blowjob, but I was able to tell exactly what you liked.”

Jooheon thought about this for a second. “Are you fucking with me?”

Minhyuk giggled, if the word ‘giggle’ could be used to describe a hiccuping snicker of delight, and batted Jooheon playfully on the chest. “I’m kidding,” he said. “It was just hard work and a lot of practice.”

“How should I feel about that?”

“Good, because I just got you off so hard you shouted my name. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“It’s just weird to think of you with somebody else,” Jooheon said, and promptly hated himself. “That’s - no, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Minhyuk laughed, pushing up on one elbow and curving down to press a kiss to the corner of Jooheon’s mouth. “Getting jealous already?” he murmured, a smug smile in his voice.

“I’m not jealous,” Jooheon protested, but it was weak. “Leave me alone, I’m still recovering from the best orgasm I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Oh fuck,” Minhyuk said, looking past Jooheon at his nightstand. “It’s almost eight.”

Jooheon sat upright so quickly his vision tunneled for half a second. “What? But it’s - sunset—”

“It’s spring,” Minhyuk groaned, shifting around in search of his phone. “Sunset is getting later. How close is the bar?”

“Pretty close,” Jooheon said, blearily hunting down his boxers. “Could you grab me a pair of jeans?”

“Where am I looking?”

“Dresser, third drawer from the top. Hey—”

From behind him Minhyuk let out a delighted gasp. “ _Honey_ ,” he crooned, and when Jooheon turned to look at him he was holding up Jooheon’s worst belonging.

“No,” Jooheon said. “That’s - I’m meeting your friends for the first time—”

“Take off your boxers,” Minhyuk purred, advancing on him. “I think it’ll be better if you go commando.”

“Okay,” Jooheon said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the long wait! december really happened to me as hard as it could, hahahaha

Kihyun stood at the bar, tapping his empty shot glass irritably on the wood. (The bartender looked at him. He stopped.) "You're sure it was this evening?" he asked.

"What?" Hyungwon asked back. He blinked slowly down at his drink. "Yeah, he said Saturday." He paused. "I think."

Kihyun closed his eyes. "You think."

"I must have made a note about it," Hyungwon groaned, rifling through his pockets.

Before meeting Hyungwon Kihyun had believed Minhyuk to be the messiest person in the universe, but then Hyungwon happened and a whole new realm of messiness was opened up to him. The contents of his pockets could be best described as detritus. Kihyun had never considered himself a particularly tidy person, but there was untidy and then there was Hyungwon.

"Wouldn't you have made the note on your phone?" he asked after a few seconds of watching gum wrappers and rubberbands and crushed receipts pile up on the bar.

"That's what I'm looking for," Hyungwon said back. (Kihyun closed his eyes. If he were Catholic he'd cross himself, but he wasn't, so he didn't.) "Oh, he texted a couple minutes ago. They're going to be late."

"I hope they're not late because Minhyuk finally got to suck his new boyfriend's dick," Kihyun said. "It's been bad enough listening to him talk about wanting to, I don't know if I can withstand a play-by-play."

Hyungwon ignored him, choosing instead to put all of the garbage he'd piled up on the bar right back into his pockets like it was a normal thing that normal people did. "Do you think Minnie will pay to make up for being late?"

"He better." Kihyun turned to lean back against the bar, fully intending to look out the big smoked glass windows and into the nighttime street. "Holy shit."

"Holy shit what," Hyungwon said, looking up. "Kihyun?" He squinted. "Are you... drooling?"

"No," Kihyun replied wetly, wiping at his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Look at that."

Hyungwon looked. "What am I - oh. Wow."

"Yeah." Kihyun swallowed, glancing at Hyungwon out of the corner of his eye. "Uh..."

"Just go," Hyungwon sighed. "You'll hear Minhyuk coming a mile away anyway. And use protection," he called after him. "I'm not ready to be an uncle."

Kihyun had liked Hyungwon a lot better back when he'd first moved into Minhyuk's place, before he'd learned how to be just as savage and annoying in English as he was in Korean, but in so many ways he was the best friend Kihyun could want, mostly in that he was a total enabler. In his pre-Hyungwon days he wouldn't have dared to even look twice, let alone leave the bar.

"Hi," he said, sliding up to the cocktail table with about as much suave cool as a nervous rodent. "May I buy you a drink?"

The object of Kihyun's infatuation looked up. Then looked down. Then looked up again, one eyebrow arched curiously. "About that," he said, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. His voice sounded exactly like the taste of caramel. "I have a better idea." 

 

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"You've already met Kihyun," Minhyuk said, closing the passenger side door before checking himself in the dark glass. "And Hyungwon only _seems_ scary."

"Oh, he only _seems_ scary," Jooheon repeated, nodding along slowly. "That's promising."

Minhyuk turned to him, laughed, reached out and cupped Jooheon's cheeks in his hands. "They'll love you, Honey. Don't worry. You're too cute not to love. Look at these cheeks!" He squished Jooheon's face between his palms to make his lips to stick out, dropping a quick kiss on the purse of his mouth. "Too adorable," he enthused, accent popping cutely on the second half of adorable.

"I guess we're about to find out," Jooheon said back, slurring the words through an unusually compact mouth.

In high school and college Jooheon had worked (probably) way too hard (okay, fine, definitely) to keep his waist tight and his cheeks nearly concave. He still dropped his jaw in photos to make his face look a little bit thinner, but life had gotten too fast-paced and scattered to keep up with diet and exercise as well as he had in school and so these days his waist was squishy and his cheeks even squishier. Minhyuk, for some reason, seemed to think this was ideal.

(Hoseok’s body, meanwhile, had happily remained smooth and tight and, if anything, had only gotten fitter. Jooheon's jealousy rarely lasted more than five minutes, at which point it always occurred to him that Hoseok ate nothing but fruit, hardboiled eggs, and quinoa. In Jooheon's personal opinion a life spent eating like that wasn't a life worth living.)

"My pants are squeaking," Jooheon said, whispering it as he reached for the handle on the front door of the only gay bar in town that Changkyun hadn't dragged him to yet. Mostly he said it because they were, but it was also to distract Minhyuk away from the heat flooding his face, and his ears, and the back of his neck...

Minhyuk took this opportunity to repeatedly smack his ass with both hands, rhythmically, like he was participating in a particularly tawdry drum circle. "It's because your thighs rub together," he murmured, pressing up close behind him to speak directly into his ear. It was more of a purr, really, but putting that label on it sent shivers up Jooheon's spine. "Hyungwon's gonna shit himself and then refuse to speak to me for a week for keeping you hidden."

"Seriously?" Jooheon mumbled, just barely loud enough for Minhyuk to hear him over the thump of music and the hum of conversation. "Is Kihyun your only straight friend?"

"Shush," Minhyuk said, slipping his hand into Jooheon's as the door latched shut behind them, lacing their fingers together in a way that struck him as almost possessive. "Come on, I think I see Hyungwon by the bar."

Minhyuk had been right, mostly. Hyungwon did seem pretty scary, tall and thin like a scarecrow as he leaned back against the bar, unimpressed eyes staring almost sullenly into the middle distance, fingers like knobbly spider legs holding a glass of dark beer like it was nothing. He looked like someone who could neg you until you died. Then he stuffed an overladen nacho in his mouth with no self-awareness of how ridiculous he looked until Minhyuk shouted, "That's disgusting," at him from across the bar on their way over, and the scare factor went down considerably.

"Hyungwon, Jooheon," Minhyuk said. "Jooheon, Hyungwon. Yah, where's Kihyunnie?"

Hyungwon replied in drawled Korean that Jooheon didn't understand, but Minhyuk did and he coughed out a laugh so loud that people stopped talking to look at him. He stuttered out a question between laughing fits, and that at least he could catch part of. ("Really?" Minhyuk had said, then Kihyun's name and some unfamiliar words and then a clucking _aigoo_ that could have come out of Jooheon's grandmother's mouth.)

"I don't know Korean," he said, but it was _in Korean_ at least.

Minhyuk and Hyungwon turned to look at him. "Kwiyeopda," Hyungwon cooed, and that word at least Jooheon knew. Minhyuk said it all the time. "Your accent is so cute."

"I told you," Minhyuk gushed, wrapping both arms around Jooheon's waist and nuzzling against his throat. "He's so cute. Look at his cheeks!"

Hyungwon did so. "I like it," he said after a second, (Jooheon was slowly realizing he knew more Korean than he'd assumed), then looked him up and down. "When's your birthday?"

"October—”

"1994," Minhyuk interrupted, sliding one hand up his arm in half reassurance and half apology. "He's a baby."

"Hey! One year younger isn't enough for you to call me a baby."

Minhyuk slid his hand all the way up Jooheon's arm to his shoulder and then swept gently down his back, palm hugging the curve of his waist before settling finally at the very base of his spine. "Baby," he said again, tucking in close and breathing the word through his teeth.

"Do you know we're in public?" Hyungwon asked conversationally, pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the time. "Kihyunnie usually has the job done by now."

"He's nothing if not efficient," Minhyuk agreed. "Do you think somebody should go check on him?"

“I need to go to the bathroom anyway," Jooheon said. "If that's where he is, I can see if he's doing all right."

Hyungwon looked at Minhyuk. Minhyuk looked at Hyungwon.

"Yeah," Hyungwon said, and the exact some time Minhyuk said, "No."

Hyungwon rounded on him, spitting Korean in (hopefully) fake outrage. "I'm not gonna put my new boyfriend through trial by fire," Minhyuk yelled back. (Jooheon and the bartender made eye contact. He regretted it immediately, while the bartender appeared unfazed.) "It's fine, Honey." Minhyuk patted him on the arm. "Kihyun probably needs his privacy."

"I can go get some pepto bismol," Jooheon said awkwardly, hooking one thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the front door. "I saw a CVS down the street. It's no big."

"That's fine," Minhyuk said quickly, but not quickly enough to cut off Hyungwon saying, "He's sucking dick."

"Ohhh," Jooheon said, realization dawning like the sun spilling light over a horizon to illuminate an unfamiliar but not unwelcoming landscape. "So Kihyun isn't your straight friend."

Hyungwon looked at him, tipping up his glass to drink beer so dark it almost looked chewy, one long pinky up like the Queen of England. When he set the glass back down on the bar he had smears of foam at the corners of his upper lip. "You're right," he said, speaking to Minhyuk without breaking eye contact with Jooheon. "He is a baby." Then his gaze shifted to somewhere past Jooheon's shoulder and his eyebrows went up. "Kihyunnie wa-isseo."

When Jooheon turned around he saw Kihyun first. Then he saw who was following close behind.

“Changkyun,” he said. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

A flash of shock flickered over Changkyun’s face so quickly that Jooheon almost wasn’t sure he’d seen it, but then his eyes went down, then up, then down again. “I see you took my advice,” he said. “I told you that the leather pants were the right choice.”

Kihyun’s look of shock wasn’t a flicker so much as it was simply a new permanent fixture of his face. “You know him?”

“I’m his best friend,” Changkyun said.

“Former best friend,” Jooheon said. “I asked you not to show up and spy on me, what the hell man—”

“Oh was that here?” He fluttered his eyelashes in an expression of complete and total innocence. “I didn’t know!”

“Yes you did, you made me give you every single detail.”

Minhyuk stepped around him to nudge Kihyun. “So did you just suck his best friend’s dick in the bathroom or what?” Kihyun’s only response was a sudden and vivid blush.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Jooheon said, sitting down heavily on a barstool. (His pants squeaked on the vinyl seat cover. He didn’t appreciate it.)

“Okay!” Minhyuk said, clapping his hands. Hyungwon said something in Korean and Minhyuk hit him. “Let’s _order some drinks_ ,” he added pointedly, “and spend some time getting to know each other.” Hyungwon arched his eyebrows. “Platonically.”

"I'm watching you," Hyungwon said solemnly, nonchalantly pulling himself up to his full height to, apparently, stare at Kihyun down his nose.

Changkyun rapped on the bar, and called out, "hey, big boy, be a dear and whip up my usual, would you?"

Minhyuk looked over at Jooheon and mouthed _Big boy_? at him. To his right Jooheon could almost feel the overwhelming heat of humiliation billowing off of Kihyun's face, and it juxtaposed nicely with Jooheon's own full body blush.

Changkyun's "usual" turned out to be a shot glass filled with some sort of milky liqueur topped off with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. When the bartender slid it across the varnished wood he said, "one whipped nipple. On the house," he added, tacking on a stupid grin. "It's nice to have you around."

"I'll just get water for now," Kihyun croaked. "I'm driving later."

Hyungwon patted him consolingly on the shoulder. "I'll bring it to you."

" _Thank you_ ," said Kihyun, and power-walked from the bar to find a table.

"Why are you here?" Jooheon whispered to Changkyun, abandoning betrayal in his search for answers. "I told you I wanted to introduce them to you once I knew them well enough to know if they'd be grossed out by your slutty ass."

"And yet..." Changkyung fluttered his eyelashes and popped the cherry into his mouth. "Who got a blowjob first?"

"Me," Jooheon said, after a moment's thought. Changkyun accidentally swallowed the cherry stem, and Jooheon turned away as he started choking. "Hey babe," he called over, and Minhyuk turned toward him like a flower following the sun. "Could you get me a Rogue IPA? I'll be right over."

"You call him _babe_?" Changkyun croaked, almost as incredulous as he was close to death.

"Dude, do you need the heimlich or something?"

"No," Changkyun wheezed, "I just need - one thing—"

"A glass of water?"

"—How big is his dick?"

Jooheon shoved him off. "Seriously, man?"

Changkyun spit the cherry stem into his hand. (It was tied in a perfect knot.) "Hold on a second," he said, taking the shot.

"You know that you're allowed to use your hands to drink shots, right."

"That's no fun." Changkyun licked whipped cream off his upper lip. "C'mon. Just give me a rough estimate."

"No," Jooheon said, partially because he'd actually never gotten the chance to see it either unclothed nor fully hard, (it had seemed big against his leg, but probably everybody's did. Most people. Whatever.), and partially because he didn't want to know almost more than he didn't want Changkyun to ask him. "I'm going to go find my beer."

(If he thought any more about the size of Minhyuk's dick he didn't know what would happen but he felt pretty sure that, whatever it was, it wouldn't be appropriate for public consumption.)

"I'll come with you," Changkyun said.

There was enough room at the table Kihyun had found for all five of them, unfortunately, and Hyungwon seemed absolutely intent on Changkyun sitting with them anyway so it ended up all right for roughly three minutes, at which point Changkyun turned to Minhyuk, smiled sweetly, and said, "How did you turn Jooheon full gay? Do you have an eight inch cock?"

Kihyun turned bright red. Hyungwon almost died trying to turn his laugh into a cough. Jooheon found himself slipping into shock, and through the haze he heard Minhyuk's voice, saying, "twenty-ish," like it was nothing.

Minhyuk blinked, looking up from where he'd been playing with the little umbrella from his drink. "Wait," he said. "Inches?"

"Oh thank god," Jooheon hissed under his breath.

Changkyun laughed, pulling out his phone. "Okay, so twenty centimeters is—” He hesitated.

"... What," Jooheon said, who would rather die than do math. "What is it."

"7.87402," he said. "Inches."

"So I guess I do have an eight inch cock," Minhyuk said happily, sticking the umbrella jauntily behind his ear. "That was easy."

He looked from face to face. "What?"

"Honey," Changkyun sighed, twisting toward Jooheon with his hand over his heart. "How did I not know you were a size queen?"

"That's not what this is about," Jooheon heard himself say. He felt himself struggle to his feet. "That's not what any of this is about."

"Jooheon, wait," Changkyun said, regret flickering over his face.

"I'm just going to the bathroom," said Jooheon, tripping over carpet as he fled.

"You spooked him," Hyungwon said after a few seconds of awkward silence.

"I didn't mean to!" Changkyun moaned, burying his head in his arms.

“Not you,” Hyungwon said, patting his arm. “Minnie.”

Minhyuk opened his mouth and made just the beginnings of a squawk of protest before freezing solid, eyes wide. “Oh,” he said. Swallowed. “Do you think he...? About my...?” He pressed his palms to his cheeks in horror. “I should go check on him.”

“No,” Kihyun stuttered, blanching as he realized what was about to happen. “Minhyuk, hold on—”

But Minhyuk was already gone, and so it was that Hyungwon, Kihyun, and Changkyun were left sitting at the table together.

“This is nice,” Hyungwon said. He took a sip of beer. “Not awkward at all.”

 

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The bathroom door opened and Jooheon sank down even lower where he sat, gingerly and fully clothed, on the toilet. _Don’t be Changkyun. Don’t be Changkyun._ He pulled his feet up off the floor just in case. _Please, please don’t be Changkyun._

Knuckles rapped gently on the door of the bathroom stall closest to the door. “Honey?”

It was Minhyuk, and Jooheon realized that Changkyun was the least of his worries. He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, trying to breathe deep and hold his breath at the same time. He kept reminding himself that he wasn’t hiding from Minhyuk - or even Changkyun, for that matter - he was just hiding for no reason.

Minhyuk’s voice seemed suddenly closer as he knocked on the next door. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

“ _You’re_ sorry,” Jooheon said out loud. “You’re sorry?”

Footsteps. Shoes appeared under the door of the stall. “Can I come in?”

“There’s no room. I’m fine. Don’t abandon your friends with Changkyun, they won’t come out of the experience unscathed. I’ll be out in just a minute.”

“Can we talk? Just for a second.”

Jooheon scrubbed both hands over his face. Wordlessly leaned forward and unlatched the door.

“Not really how I imagined getting on my knees for you the first time,” Minhyuk commented casually, locking the door behind him as he sank purposefully to the ground. He rubbed Jooheon’s knees gently, staring worriedly up into his face like he was searching his expression for clues. “Did I embarrass you?” he blurted out. “I’m sorry, just tell me what I did wrong so I can—”

“No,” Jooheon interrupted. “Oh my god, no. You just have a really big dick.”

“So?”

“So?” Jooheon coughed out an incredulous laugh. “So - so I don’t know. That’s all. I don’t know, I guess I was just surprised.”

“I don’t have to do anything with it.” Minhyuk paused. Rolled his eyes in thought. “Obviously I’m going to do _some_ things…”

“That’s not what I mean, I don’t know—”

“You don’t have to bottom for me,” Minhyuk cut in, looking even more worried with each passing second. “If you don’t want to—”

“But I _want_ to,” Jooheon blurted out, and loathed himself intensely.

“... Oh,” Minhyuk breathed. His pupils blew wide open, his breath short, his grip tightening almost imperceptibly on Jooheon’s knees. (The leather creaked, and for the first time that night Jooheon realized what exactly was so sexy about leather pants.) “Y-you do?”

There were a lot of things he could say in response to that. The one that was winning was a cool denial, followed up by a panicked denial, followed up by leaving the bathroom and driving off into a horizon notably bereft of eight inch dicks. It felt like it took forever to sort through every possibility but in real life not even a full second passed before Jooheon said, “Yeah. I think so.” He hesitated. “Eventually. Maybe.”

“Whenever,” Minhyuk sighed, (groaned), coming up on his knees, stretching to press a kiss to Jooheon’s forehead. “It’s okay.” His left eyebrow. “Slow as you need.” His right. “Don’t worry.”

“I really don’t want to make out on this toilet,” Jooheon whispered urgently. His dick was starting to complain about going commando in pants this tight and Minhyuk wasn’t helping. “I know exactly where it’s been.”

“Thought you said you’d never been here before,” Minhyuk murmured, cradling Jooheon’s jaw in both hands.

“That’s not—”

Every time Minhyuk kissed him it felt electric, and this time was no different.

 

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“That was quick,” Hyungwon said, looking both of them up and down curiously. “Nice clean up. I would never have suspected.”

“Where did Kihyun go?” asked Minhyuk, sidestepping the commentary. “And Changkyun?”

“I suggested they get an uber,” Hyungwon replied, “and then a room. It was getting messy.”

“I told you,” Jooheon mumbled in Minhyuk’s ear, but just got batted away for his trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm ashamed to admit to you all that the opening of this chapter is lifted straight out of Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett.


	5. Chapter 5

Quiet, in Hyungwon's experience, was something that happened to other people. He’d learned how to sleep through an unholy racket at a young age and had held onto that knowledge with a white-knuckled grip, and living with Minhyuk tested even those concrete bond. Hyungwon suspected that Minhyuk’s volume could be used like a canary in a coal mine or the zing of crickets before a storm, but Minhyuk never shut up long enough to test his hypothesis.

Usually.

"You haven't sung a street sign in four exits," Hyungwon said, watching the nighttime roads slip by in the spotlights and shadows of streetlights overhead. "Something wrong?"

"No," Minhyuk said, pumping the brakes a little as he came up on a turn. He didn't look Hyungwon in the eye when he said it, but that wasn't so odd. It was odd that he didn't laugh. "Everything is..." A smile crept over his face, muscles unaccustomed to making those familiar movements so slowly. "It's great, actually."

"What did you two do in there? You were gone for less than ten minutes."

"We talked." Minhyuk bit his lips together. "I really like him."

"That's pretty obvious."

"No, I mean..." Suddenly they were pulling off the highway, around the off-ramp and into a gas station. They parked, Minhyuk pulled the handbrake but didn’t turn off the car. "I really like him, Hyungwon-ah," Minhyuk said. "It’s not just that he’s pretty."

Hyungwon and Minhyuk sat in the car for a few seconds, engine shuddering quietly as it idled. "You could at least have the decency to buy me a hot dog if you're going to talk to me about your feelings," Hyungwon said.

"'We have food at home,'" Minhyuk drawled, copying Kihyun's bossy, prim English as he turned off the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt.

If you squinted your eyes enough that everything blurred and you held your breath so you didn't catch the particulars of warmed-over deep-fried flavor and you didn't look in the open refrigerators filled with depressing prepared food then American 7-11's were exactly the same as Korean 7-11's, in that the sign colors were the same and you could buy a coke and something with fake cheese on it. More deodorant, less triangle kimbap. No banana milk. Hot dogs, though. Hot dogs.

"How old are they?" he asked the guy behind the counter.

"I don't know when they were born," said the guy. This answer came after some thought and accompanied by the expression of a man currently in the process of seeing God.

Hyungwon looked at him. Then he turned around to find Minhyuk down an aisle, holding two boxes of different condoms and apparently trying to comparison shop in a convenience store at 1am. "Remember when you were going to find us a new hook up?" he called back. "I bet this guy has a lead. You want me to ask?"

"Don't ask strangers for drugs," Minhyuk replied, putting one of the boxes back.

"I'll have your two saddest dogs," Hyungwon said, switching back to English. "I want the hot dogs that were on the rollers when you clocked in and you were gonna leave on for somebody else to deal with when you clocked out. Oh yes," he said, eyes flickering down to the nametag on his chest, “ _Chase_ —” the clerk's red-rimmed eyes widened "—I know about your little tricks. Now give me the dogs and nobody needs to know that you get the good stuff from..."

"Beth," the guy finished for him.

"Your dealer's name is Beth?"

He looked very worried, standing there with both hands in food-safety gloves, fingers spread. "She's the franchise owner?"

"Never mind," Hyungwon yelled over his shoulder, peeling a few bills off the thin stack in his wallet. “He's just dumb.”

"What did I tell you about asking strangers for drugs?" Minhyuk tossed a box on the counter, nudging Hyungwon aside to reach in his back pocket. "I'll buy you the hot dogs as long as you promise not to tell Kihyun I'm the one who drove home."

Hyungwon stood aside easily. He was never hard to convince when it came to putting his wallet back in his pocket. "He's going to find out you can drive eventually. He’s not going to drive you around forever."

"Sounds like a problem for future me. Thanks, man," he said, this to Chase. "Hey, you know when Beth's in next?"

"Monday at 8.”

"She still selling organic oregano out the back?"

"Yeah.”

"Thanks," Minhyuk said, and beamed, dropping his change into the St Jude's donation bucket. "You've been a big help. Clean your hot dog rollers, Chase."

The bell dinged overhead as they wandered back out into the crisp asphalt-heavy air of suburban midnight. "Did you buy magnums?"

"Of course not."

"What'd you buy, then?"

Minhyuk flipped the box in the air. Spongebob Squarepants grinned on the cardboard. "Bandaids. Have you ever wanted to go, like... really slow?"

The first bite of a terrible hot dog was simultaneously the best and worst experience of the meal. Low quality jerky that gave way upsettingly into searing grease and the saccharine tang of gas station ketchup, flavors exploding in his mouth like a cacophony of really horrible things. Hyungwon dribbled, and was fully aware of it.

"Yes," he said, mouth and heart full of grease and angel song. He was good at compartmentalizing his culinary experiences and his need to savage his friends. "It's kind of, like... my brand."

"I mean with sex.”

Hyungwon swallowed. "I'm gonna need another hot dog for this."

"I promised your mom I wouldn't let America kill you, now sit here and talk to me about dick like any other normal childhood best friend."

"This wasn't what I signed up for when I pushed you off the swings," Hyungwon muttered under his breath, squatting on the curb next to his best friend and holding up both hot dogs delicately like a meditating frog.

"I very clearly remember telling you that you'd be sorry."

"Ah," Hyungwon sighed, raising one sausage aloft and gazing nostalgically into the middle distance, "the whims of fate. Talk to me about your slow dick problems fast before I realize what I've done."

"Honey wants to go slow," Minhyuk blurted out.

"And?"

"I don't usually go slow."

"And?"

"But I think I want to?" Minhyuk sat down on the pavement, sneakers scuffing on the painted lines between parking spots, and started carefully opening the box of bandaids. "I want to go slow."

Hyungwon considered this. "Do you not want to fuck him? Because you could have fooled me. And probably the NSA, for that matter."

"Did you see his ass?"

"You kept pointing at it whenever his back was turned."

Minhyuk tucked the open box between his knees in order to make an exaggerating squeezing motion with both hands. "God is real," he said. “You just want to… _hnn_ , right in there, you just wanna slap it around, you know?”

“But do you want the responsibility?” Hyungwon asked. “He panicked back there.”

Minhyuk made a face, peeling the wax paper off of a bandaid, handling it carefully as it stuck to his fingertips. “It’s not that.”

“What is it?”

“It’s that I don’t know what’s happening,” Minhyuk said, bending over to smooth the bandaid over the rubber toe of his chucks, “and I don’t want to mess up forever for right now.”

“Oh,” Hyungwon said. He couldn’t stop looking at Minhyuk’s shoes. They hadn’t started out as his, they used to belong to somebody else back when he was in the US and Hyungwon was still in the military, but they were in his entryway when Hyungwon set his suitcase down on the linoleum. Somebody had painted them and they still looked really good, if a little worn, the post-modern design rubbing off of the canvas and the hearts on the toes losing their ink.

Hyungwon had never met whoever it was who’d given Minhyuk the shoes, but he wore them when he was nervous, and right now he was smoothing a bandaid over one of the faded hearts on the toes.

“Forever’s a long time,” Minhyuk said then, sitting up to stretch his leg out and inspect his work with a careful eye. “There’s a lot to mess up.”

“You can fucking say that again,” Hyungwon said, and started in on the second hot dog without a modicum of irony. “You know what you need?”

Minhyuk glanced up. “What?”

“Some oregano,” Hyungwon said. He clapped Minhyuk on the back. “And a really good wank.”

“A bowl of allspice would probably get you higher than Beth’s weed,” Minhyuk said, standing up and jingling the keys to Kihyun’s car in his pocket. “What do you think?”

“I’ve never tried Beth’s weed.”

“About Jooheon.”

Hyungwon tossed his garbage into the dumpster, only his inner Kihyun forcing him to get it in on the second try. (His inner Hyungwon was disgusted.) “Dunno,” he said. “Fuck him, I guess. Eventually,” he added quickly, catching the look Minhyuk shot him over the roof of the car as he unlocked the doors. “Shit, I don’t know. Wait to stick it in until you’re on your deathbeds if you want. I don’t get why it’s a problem.”

“It’s not,” Minhyuk said. He closed the door and then just sat there, staring unseeing out the windshield. “Holy shit. It’s not a problem.”

“Well… great.” Hyungwon narrowed his eyes. “You okay?”

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk said, hands tightening on the steering wheel and a funny smile coming over his face. “I’m falling in love. I’m so _excited_.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jooheon becomes a gay padawan; hoseok's mom is not a demon, but he might be; changkyun has non-buyer's remorse; minhyuk just woke up; and kihyun doesn't have much clue either but he's better at extrapolating from incomplete data.

When Jooheon showed up on Changkyun's front step he was wearing loose basketball shorts, a hoodie, and a huge blinking neon sign over his head (invisible to virtually everyone else) that read CHANGKYUN YOU IDIOT YOUR BFF IS A BOTTOM.

"Hey man," Changkyun said, shuffling aside to make room. "Come on in. Is that beer?"

Jooheon held up the six pack with a wicked grin, shuffling out of his sneakers in the wood entryway and turning toward the kitchen. "Root beer. The good kind. Where's Hoseok?"

"The gym," Changkyun said, closing the door behind him. Hoseok could really be anywhere as far as he knew, he'd only woken up half an hour ago and had spent twenty of those thirty minutes sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands thinking about how much he hated finals, but the gym was a pretty good bet. "He'll probably be back in a little bit, I mentioned you were coming over and you know how much he loves pretending he's in with the youths."

"Almost as much as you love socializing with older men," Jooheon replied, and, frankly, Changkyun sometimes regretted all the work he'd put into bolstering Jooheon's self esteem in high school and college. "You said you had some kind of plan for today?"

"Education," Changkyun said, slipping past his best friend into the kitchen, using his socks to slide by on the hardwood and heading for the cabinet to grab glasses.

"Education," Jooheon echoed, deadpan. He stood still in front of the open fridge, a glass bottle of root beer in one hand. "Please don't tell me you're going to make me help you study again, I still have paper cuts from the last set of flash cards."

"Not my education," Changkyun replied, deciding not to point out that if Jooheon still had paper cuts then obviously his own situation was much much worse, " _your_ education." The front door opened and he skittered back to peer back down the hallway. "Oh hey Ms Shin, I didn't see you come up the walk! Do you have any more groceries?"

"Hoseokkie's got it," came Hoseok's mom's voice, words almost drowned out by the crinkling of plastic grocery bags. "Silly boy, hates taking more than one trip. Oh, Honey!"

"Uh hey, Ms Shin," Jooheon said, standing up straight. "Hi, it's been a few, uh— "

"Months," she provided helpfully, pulling the scarf off of her tightly braided, graying black hair. Her shell ears poked out between the strands and even as she scolded her eyes couldn't hide the curve of a smile. "I heard you got a boyfriend. Is his penis nice?"

In Changkyun's opinion, there were two types of people in the world:  
1\. Demons;  
2\. Hoseok's mom.

"Mom," Hoseok said, finally coming in with a bright red face and thick arms flexing under too many groceries, "please stop asking my friends about genitals."

"Is _he_ nice?" she amended, not looking away from Jooheon's face.

"Yes," Jooheon said. "He's very nice."

"Good. Let Hoseokkie know if he treats you bad, I'll go put raw chicken in his vents."

"I'm going to punch him, too," Hoseok added from the opposite countertop, setting cans down on the formica and shuffling bags to the side with an easy pick and swish motion. "Honey's got his bases covered."

"He's nice," Changkyun said, digging through a drawer to find a bottle opener for the root beer. "Ki says he leaves his underwear in the bathroom after he showers, though."

Hoseok's eyes narrowed and he whipped his head around. "Who's Ki?"

Jooheon rolled his eyes theatrically and turned to digging through a nearby grocery bag for snacks, but Changkyun still had Hoseok's mom's attention. "Gyunnie," she said. "You've met him and didn't tell me?"

"Just for a few minutes," Changkyun said, ignoring Hoseok entirely. "He has bleached hair and a huge—" Jooheon looked at him. "—A great smile. Nice guy," he concluded, casually leaning away from Jooheon and his dagger gaze.

Hoseok's mom sighed, turning to Jooheon and reaching up to pat his cheeks happily with both hands. "I'm so glad you found a nice boy," she said. "You deserve a nice boy."

"Thanks," Jooheon said, tips of his ears going red. "I think he's nice."

"Hopefully he's more than just nice," Hoseok said, stuffing empty plastic grocery bags into the cabinet under the sink.

"Very nice?" Jooheon hazarded.

"I'm monopolizing you," Hoseok's mom said, waving a hand to dismiss them like an empress shooing away dust. "Go do whatever men do when they hang out together."

"Watch porn," Changkyun said.

"Probably," Hoseok's mom sighed.

"No," Jooheon said, "that's not what we're doing."

Changkyun looked at him. "Are you sure?"

A thoughtful silence fell over the kitchen.

"Mom," Hoseok said, "I'm gonna make some popcorn. Do you want some?"

"That sounds lovely, dear."

 

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"You're my gay padawan," Changkyun explained for the second time, speaking more slowly than he personally felt was strictly necessary. "I'm gonna teach you all the gay secrets. It's like the jedi code, in that we're fabulous and often have no biological children."

They sat next to each other on Changkyun's bed, a twin mattress on a hollywood base pushed up against the wall and covered by a sensible quilt, leaning against the wall with their feet hanging off the edge as Changkyun worked on saving and closing all of his schoolwork open on his laptop so he could get started with the presentation.

Jooheon reached out and laid a hand on Changkyun's knee. "You have no idea how much I would appreciate that," he said, "if I didn't already know how to live a homosexual lifestyle."

"You haven't touched a dick for—"

"About two days," Jooheon interrupted, because he was Jooheon and a huge asshole who loved to brag about all the dick he got to touch.

" _Before_ that," Changkyun added irritably, flicking Jooheon's hand off his leg. "Before that you hadn't touched a dick in years, and you didn't like it much then. I figure a refresher course wouldn't hurt."

"He liked it," Hoseok said, opening the door of Changkyun's bedroom with a huge bowl of popcorn cradled in one arm. "I have very vivid memories of him liking it."

"It's weird when you bring that up," Jooheon said, but he scootched over on Changkyun's bed anyway to make room for him. "Oh man, is that sweet popcorn?"

"Why is it weird that you met your best friend sucking his dick at a college party?"

"I'm Honey's best friend," Changkyun cut in, "and anyway I've finished getting it set up so hush."

"Oh no," Jooheon moaned, getting a look at the screen.

"Oh _yes_ ," Hoseok cackled, curling around the bowl of popcorn in horrible delight. "Are all of those tabs pornhub?"

"All," Changkyun breathed out, gesturing across the screen of his laptop, "all of them are pornhub. A few classics," he continued, "a few personal favorites, and, of course, a few clips that, dare I say... our Honey might particularly appreciate."

Jooheon sighed. Then he sighed again, flopping his head to the left. Then he sighed a third time, flopping his head to the right.

"Just admit that it sounds fun," Hoseok said, and threw a piece of popcorn at him.

"I reserve the right to make fun of all of it," Jooheon said quickly, the words tumbling out as Changkyun crowed in triumph and shoved the computer over onto Jooheon's lap in the middle so they could all see it.

"That's what porn parties are for," Changkyun cooed comfortingly. "We're here to learn, not come."

"Learn _what_?"

"How to be gay!" Hoseok said, shaking his fist. "We are men! Let's be men and gay at the same time!"

"I'm bisexual," Jooheon said. "Pretty sure."

"Let's be men and some percentage of gay at the same time!"

"I'm pressing play," Changkyun said.

He pressed play, and the next thirteen minutes were spent in abject almost-silence.

The clip ended. "Wait," Jooheon said. "So did they just not go to Chad's party?"

"Do you think he's being difficult on purpose?" Hoseok asked thoughtfully.

"No," Changkyun said, "this is definitely a self defense response. Chad's party was a metaphor," he continued, this to Jooheon. "For Brent and Jack's stagnant sex life."

"So they had to fuck on the counter," Hoseok added. "The counter was Chad's party."

"Don't confuse him."

"I know what sex looks like," Jooheon said, sitting back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. His lips poked out in a subconscious pout, pink in his cheeks belying his embarrassment. "I know what dicks look like and what to do with them—"

"Has Minhyuk dicked you down yet?" Changkyun asked.

Jooheon went unnaturally pale. "Excuse me?"

Hoseok groaned, reaching over to smack Changkyun on the arm. "We've talked about this."

"Have you," Changkyun tried again, "ever, with his penis—"

"No I got what you meant thank you," Jooheon said, and then he said, "No." Then he said, "He hasn't and his dick is really big and I don't know what I'm gonna do about it."

Hoseok and Changkyun made eye contact across Jooheon's line of vision. "You don't have to, like..." Hoseok licked a bit of salt nervously from the corner of his mouth. "Like I mean I know we're talking about 'being gay' like that's a specific thing but it's not, and you don't have to do anything if you don't want to."

"I know," Jooheon said, but the words cracked in his throat.

"You know?"

"I know I don't have to do anything I don't want to do," Jooheon said, voice strengthening a little, "but I think I might - I mean I do, I want to do this, and it's stressing me out because it's, like, it's this thing, you know? I was already, I was thinking about it, you know, I don't know why but I was and then he turned out to have an eight inch dick—"

Hoseok choked on a piece of popcorn.

"—And so now I can't stop thinking about my boyfriend fucking me," Jooheon continued, "but his dick is _huge_. Have you ever been fucked by an eight inch dick?"

"Yeah," Hoseok croaked between coughs.

"At least twice," Changkyun said. "Maybe more than that, but there are some situations where there's just not anywhere to keep a measuring tape."

"But that can't be fun," Jooheon insisted, shaking his head. "There's no way that can be fun."

Changkyun sighed. "Honey, have you ever known me to do anything that I didn't find fun?"

Jooheon turned to counter, but hesitated. "I'm sure at least a couple times," he said after half a second of frenzied thought. "You're going to college, that's not fun."

"Going to college and taking it up the ass from a one night stand aren't the same thing."

"Okay I have to ask, did you and Kihyun—"

"Yes," Changkyun cut him off, "it can be fun."

"Tell you what," Hoseok said, handing the popcorn over to pull the computer onto his lap. "I'll go find us something _really_ amateur. People who can't fake an orgasm to save their lives."

"If you have to fake an orgasm just cut off his dick and leave," Changkyun said. He blinked at the look on Jooheon’s face. "What? Tops are demons."

"You think everyone is a demon," Jooheon sighed. He'd crossed his legs at the knees and now was rubbing his palms rhythmically down the slippery fabric over his thighs, loose hoodie bagging over his lap, gnawing his lower lip. "Like how fun?"

"About this fun," Hoseok said, dumping the laptop back into Jooheon's hands before reaching over and hitting the space bar.

"Oh good," Jooheon scoffed. "A 'hands free cumpilation.' Just what I've always—"

He went quiet at about the same time the sound in the video got loud so at first Changkyun assumed he was just distracted by the unexpectedly Korean porn, but then a few more seconds had passed and the bottom was begging and when Changkyun finally glanced over to see what was wrong with his best friend nothing was wrong. Jooheon was just transfixed, lips parted, brow furrowed, eyes uncharacteristically wide like he was trying to make sure he didn't miss even an eyelash-breadth of the screen.

Hoseok chose this moment to take a really big and really loud bite of popcorn and Changkyun almost leapt over and throttled him for ruining Jooheon's big fat gay moment until he realized that Jooheon hadn't been distracted at all and his big fat gay moment remained firmly intact.

"I think," Hoseok said smugly through a mouth full of simple carbs, "that we got 'im."

On the screen the bottom orgasmed without being touched, getting come all the way up his chest as he lay gasping on his back with his knees by his shoulders and his feet in the air and the blanket clenched in white-knuckled fists. As he was still moaning and twitching the top leaned in close, face hidden by the camera angle, and the mic picked up a fond, whispered _"Joa, jagi?"_ before the clip ended and it was suddenly three white guys fucking each other in a gazebo.

Jooheon reached out his hand and _slapped_ the space bar, pausing all three white guys in positions that couldn't possibly be comfortable. "That," he said, staring through the laptop screen. "You can do that?"

"You'd need a gazebo," Hoseok said. "But I mean there _are_ three of us—"

"Coming hands free like that? Takes practice," Changkyun said. "It's easier for some people than others, and of course your boyfriend has to know what he's doing. Or you, if you're the one doing it to yourself, but that takes practice too."

"If I'm—?" Jooheon closed his mouth, lips tight across in a perfectly straight line. "Got it. Cool. Yeah, practice. That makes sense." He swallowed. "Have you ever—"

Changkyun patted him affectionately on the arm. "Guess. Yes or no. You wanna flip a coin? Heads means I haven't, tails—"

“He hasn’t,” Hoseok interrupted, and Changkyun immediately bounced up onto his knees and laid a solid smack on the crown of his head. “Hey!”

“Don’t tell my padawan that,” Changkyun hissed. “He needs to see me as a role model.” He sat down again and took one of Jooheon’s hands seriously. “I haven’t,” he said. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve never come hands free.”

“It feels weird that you’re stroking my hand while you say that.”

“How long have you been friends with him?” Hoseok mumbled under his breath. “He’s always like this.”

Jooheon squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head - a quick one-two back and forth as though to clear his mind by force. “I’m gonna go use the restroom,” he said.

“Back of the third drawer.”

“What?”

“That’s where the lube is. Back of the third drawer.”

Jooheon sighed and flipped Changkyun the bird over his shoulder as he scooted to the edge of the mattress, pushing up to his feet and heading for the door.

“You should be nicer to him,” Hoseok said, placing the half full bowl of popcorn in the depression Jooheon’s ass had left on the bed between them. “Our Honey has a soft underbelly of puritan shame and internalized homophobia. He can’t help it.”

“It’s called tough love,” Changkyun sniffed, digging through the kernels for the best and butteriest pieces, picking them out with his right hand and piling them neatly in his left. “I’ve known Jooheon way longer than you, sometimes he just needs a little push.”

“And I’ve sucked his dick infinitely more times than you,” Hoseok countered, “and I’m telling you to be nice. He’s tender.” He paused, a piece of popcorn held aloft in one pensive hand. “He’s probably in the bathroom freaking out as we speak.”

 

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“Hey,” Jooheon said into the phone, voice hushed as he sat hunched over on the toilet. “Hi. How are you? Sorry to bother you.”

“Honey you never bother me,” Minhyuk purred on the other end of the line, obviously freshly awake with his voice creaking and unusually low. “I was just taking a cat nap.” Every nap was a cat nap, as far as Minhyuk was concerned. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember Changkyun?”

“Ki’s new muse?” Jooheon could almost hear Minhyuk’s eyes rolling through the phone. “Of course I do. Tan and soft, just the way he likes them.”

Jooheon rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, listen, sidenote: you should let Kihyun know that Changkyun’s the catch-and-release type.”

“Mm. It’s fine, so’s he.” He was stretching, yawning. For all of Jooheon’s nicknames, he couldn’t help but find it ironic that it was Minhyuk who looked and sounded so much like fresh clove- and tangerine-laced honey. “What’d you call about, bumblebee?”

They’d been working on this. Jooheon had been working on it, mostly, and Minhyuk had been goading him onward with the gentle touch of somebody who really wanted to touch his ass all the time, but there was work being done and it had actually been over a week since he’d first admitted that he wanted to bottom (awkward and humiliated in a gay bar bathroom) and they’d been working on it - this whole honesty thing. Jooheon wasn’t a fan.

“Did you know that you can come without touching your dick?” Jooheon blurted out. “I’m— Changkyun made me come over to watch gay porn because he says I’m his gay padawan now even though I’m the one who took him to the GSA back in high school when he was still wearing transition lenses and tevas in the middle of February—”

“Baby, baby, slow down!” Thank god, Minhyuk was laughing and not angry. “First of all, that’s so cute and I already like him. And yeah, I knew that. I never have,” he added quickly, “and I’ve never, um, helped one happen. I guess.”

“Well I guess you learn something new every day,” Jooheon said, head in his hands.

“That’s true. Just yesterday I learned that when people talk about the one-armed bandit they’re talking about slot machines.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah. I guess I just thought that the wild west had a lot of bandits with one arm.”

“Ha ha,” said Jooheon, who had actually asked _really?_ about the slot machine fact but was grateful for the out. “I mean you’re from Korea, so it’s not like it’s totally unreasonable that you didn’t know.”

Minhyuk cackled. “That’s true. Can you imagine if I grew up here and didn’t know that?”

“Unfathomable,” said Jooheon, who didn’t have to imagine it at all. (He resolved to text his mother and demand an explanation for this gap in his education.) “Hey, I—”

Minhyuk did the thing Jooheon hated most of all, which was going quiet and attentive when Jooheon was about to say something he didn’t mind if Minhyuk forgot.

“I’ve been trying to figure out if I actually want to try it,” Jooheon blurted out into the waiting and silent void. “Bottoming, I mean. I mean it sounds weird and not fun and—”

“Baby, we don’t have to—”

“—But that seems,” said Jooheon, working very very hard on being honest about what he wanted, “like a lot of fun. Still weird,” he added quickly, “and I’m probably going to feel that way for a while—”

“It’s okay, Honey, you can feel weird, it’s new—”

“Shut up, I’m trying to tell you that I want to have a hands free prostate orgasm and I want you to, to be involved, and it’s hard enough trying to talk past myself, let alone somebody else.”

Minhyuk went quiet and attentive once again, but it was different this time. “Honey,” he sighed finally, “I should have known you’d be trouble.”

A flare of defiance pulsed low in the pit of his stomach. “Oh, I’m trouble? What are you gonna do about it?”

“Besides pin you down and show you who’s boss?”

Jooheon sucked in a breath, knees tightening close together and free hand fisting in the slick fabric of his basketball shorts. He hadn’t been expected a damn porn party or he’d have worn something less potentially incriminating but he’d made his bed and now he had to have an obvious boner in it.

“Sorry,” Minhyuk stuttered, voice rough and close to the mic. Mattress springs shrieked as he sat up quickly. “Sorry, I’m—” A muttered curse, definitely Korean. “I’m half asleep, don’t take that too seriously.”

“Don’t be,” Jooheon croaked. “Sorry. Don’t be sorry.”

A quick, tiny little moan. “Have you been the one waiting for me? This whole time?”

“Maybe,” Jooheon whispered back, warmth spreading through him from his pelvis out.

Some muffled scuffling. “Hey, uh. Do you maybe want. Do you want to come over?”

Jooheon squeezed his eyes shut, trying to dull the headache caused by all the blood draining down and out of his brain in order to pool in other, more urgent places. “Changkyun and Hoseok,” he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “I was supposed to hang out—”

“There’s nobody home,” Minhyuk whispered. “Kihyun’s visiting his parents. Hyungwon’s at some workshop downtown that goes all weekend.”

“Oh,” Jooheon said.

“Yeah,” Minhyuk said back, something wicked and delighted in his voice. “Oh.”

 

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"Hey," Hoseok said.

"What's up?" asked Changkyun, not looking up from his laptop. He’d moved to his desk after the fifth minute Jooheon was ‘using the restroom’ (when he’d said “it takes practice” he hadn’t meant right then, no matter how many jokes he made about the lube at the back of the third drawer) and was shuffling through spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet of accounting homework.

"Who's Ki?"

Changkyun let out a long breath and leaned back in his desk chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head. He tended to tell Hoseok everything, including the nastier things he usually spared Jooheon, but he’d been hesitant to dish on this for some reason. He couldn’t think of what the reason could be except for exactly the reason why, but he didn’t like it so he’d decided to ignore it. "You know how sometimes,” he said slowly, “you're at, like, costco or something and you turn a corner and there's a sample stand there with little cups and it doesn't look like the kind of thing you want to try—"

"I have never _not_ wanted to try a costco sample," Hoseok replied, completely serious.

"But you try it anyway," Changkyun pressed on. "And then it turns out that it's, like, better than everything you thought you liked before? Except it was only that one sample and you forgot to get its number," he added, finally cracking enough to let his head drop into his hands as he tipped forward.

Hoseok considered this. "No," he said finally. "I don't think that's ever happened to me. I always get phone numbers from the sample ladies at costco."

"There are sample gentlemen too."

Hoseok sniffed. "I try not to talk to men."

"You and I are both men, Hoseok. Also you’re a disgusting and flagrant homosexual."

"Oh," Hoseok replied darkly, "believe me. I'm wildly aware. That doesn't answer my question, though."

"Ki is Kihyun," Changkyun blurted out. "I met him at a bar and we got nasty in the bathroom and he's got the tongue of a god and the throat of a demon and he's not really my type but like whatever, I like to mess around, but then we got out of the bathroom and Kihyun is Minhyuk's friend—"

"Wait, Minhyuk Minhyuk? Honey's Minhyuk?"

"Honey's Minhyuk," Changkyun said. "But then I was having a good time and Ki and I went and got a hotel room and he paid and it was _so_ fun—"

Hoseok, bless him, didn't sigh judgmentally at this revelation. He was probably all sighed out. "—And now he's the costco sample who got away?"

Changkyun deflated. "Yeah." Then he deflated a little more. "You wouldn't believe the things he can do with his mouth."

"And you forgot to get his number." Hoseok shook his head, tsking gently. "Your fuckboy habits are coming to bite you in the ass, kiddo. Where’s your phone?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Changkyun said, but he’d left his phone, tragically unlocked, sitting on the quilt within easy reach of his worst enemy and closest confidante. “Hoseok, seriously, I already tried to find his name i my contacts, give it—”

The door slammed open to reveal Jooheon standing wild eyed at the threshold, one hand stuffed into the front pocket of his pullover hoodie as though he were trying to hold it out and away from his body. “Hi,” he said. “I have to go.”

“What’s Kihyun’s number?” asked Hoseok, scrolling back up through Changkyun’s contacts.

“Do not,” Changkyun said, standing up.

Jooheon brought his phone up to his ear, apparently still in the middle of a phone call. “What’s Kihyun’s number? No, just give it, it’s not important. Okay,” he said, flapping a hand at Hoseok. “You ready?”

For half a second Changkyun considered protesting, but then a genuine calm washed over him as it occurred to him that he had all kinds of blackmail on both Jooheon and Hoseok and could easily turn their lives into straight up hell. It was a nice thought! Plus he’d have Kihyun’s number. Win win. He quieted sullenly as Hoseok entered it into his phone.

“You got it?” Jooheon was saying.

“You’re sure this is it,” Hoseok said, looking at the screen as though he were witnessing the birth of a unicorn. “This is his number.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m gonna go, okay? Thanks,” he added quickly, stepping backward to shoot this to Changkyun around the doorframe. “I’ll catch up with you.” Then he was gone, with a distant, “I dunno, maybe fifteen minutes if I speed?” floating back down the hallway before (finally) the front door slammed shut.

“The good news,” Hoseok said into the brand new quiet, “is that this guy’s phone number is, actually, saved in your phone.”

Relief, followed quickly by horror. “What—” Changkyun swallowed. “Do I wanna know the bad news?”

“The bad news,” Hoseok said, trying to affect an announcer voice that was completely ruined by how much he broke into laughter. “His number is saved in your phone under the name ‘Daddy,’ followed up with several peace sign emojis and then a lot of sweat drop emojis.” He held up the phone so the screen was facing out. “How much ‘fun’ did you have?”

 

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 **[BRATTY BABY BOY]  
** why the everloving fuck are you saved in my phone as Daddy????

 

Kihyun slid his phone slowly back into his pocket.

“What was that, dear?” his mother asked, dabbing at her mouth with the corner of her napkin.

“Wrong number,” Kihyun lied, smiling blandly. “Will you excuse me?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hyunwoo is in this fic. i promise. he just doesn't show up until june because of reasons and we're still like early may or so uhhh yep


	7. Chapter 7

Minhyuk grabbed Jooheon by the fabric around his collar bones and pulled him bodily over the threshold of his front door, nearly unbalancing them both but saving it at the last second by grabbing hold of the doorknob and using the momentum to pin Jooheon against the wall before finally kicking the door closed. Any other time he'd have demanded adulation for his moment of physical prowess but right now he was very, very busy.

"14 minutes," Minhyuk breathed through a distracted, curling smile. His elbows held Jooheon's shoulders down but his hands were free to card gently through his hair, scritch his scalp as though he were a cat, tug gently at loose handfuls to pull his head back and part those soft pink rosebud lips in a gasp of surprise. "You missed me?"

"Shut up," Jooheon said, hands reaching to find Minhyuk's waist. Jooheon held him carefully still, uncertain, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed. It was cute, most of the time, except for times like this when he wouldn't mind something just a little bit rougher. (Later. Right now was all about Jooheon.) "Did you already forget that you're the one who made me come over?"

“ _Made_ you," Minhyuk scoffed, leaning in to press his hips flush against Jooheon's. "'15 minutes if I speed,' remember?" Jooheon, bless his heart, had worn basketball shorts. Minhyuk almost wanted to leave them on, it was so cute, but Jooheon hiccuped and jerked against him and Minhyuk decided that probably instead it would be better to get Jooheon as naked as possible and then kiss every single soft warm smooth inch of him.

As inviting as it was to push him to the slate tile of the split level entryway and ravish him there, Minhyuk was a romantic at heart. The cold unswept floor, tracked with the remnants of both April showers as well as May flowers, simply wasn't the proper place for the deflowering of the sweetest boy in the world. Instead of giving in to his baser instincts Minhyuk just huffed out a low, bestial growl and dragged Jooheon up the stairs by one wrist.

"I didn't hit any reds," Jooheon said, following dutifully behind and apparently more concerned with reassuring Minhyuk of his defensive driving skills than with his imminent dicking. "I didn't speed that mu— _oof—_ "

"Tell me if you wanna stop," Minhyuk said, gently nudging Jooheon backward until his calves hit the edge of the bed and he sat down instinctively. "Or slow down. Or do something different."

"Are we fucking?" Jooheon went even paler than usual. "Are we about to fuck? Is this, are we— sex?"

"Only as far as you want," said Minhyuk, pulling his t-shirt over his head and dropping it to the carpet. "So tell me if you wanna stop, okay? Lift your arms."

Jooheon obeyed beautifully and Minhyuk couldn't keep away from the memory of Jooheon on the phone, telling him in a halting voice that he didn't have to be sorry. He had a loose black t-shirt on underneath—"We have to talk about you wearing clothes that fit," Minhyuk murmured, bringing pink to Jooheon's cheeks—and Minhyuk pulled that off too. All of it went onto the floor in no order whatsoever, leaving both of them shirtless—

"Hey," Minhyuk said. He didn't say anything else, but he pulled Jooheon's hands away from where they had moved to cover him back up again, kissing each palm. 

"Hey what," Jooheon croaked. He seemed cold suddenly, even though the old windows in Minhyuk's bedroom warmed up the space like a veritable easy-bake oven in the afternoons, the kind of cold that makes a person shrink in on themselves.

"Hey," Minhyuk said again, and pushed Jooheon farther up the bed so that he could creep up the mattress and between his legs. "Hey nothing. Just hey." He pushed and pushed until Jooheon was pressed up against the headboard, and then he let himself grin. "Hey, I like you."

Jooheon responded by singing a little snippet of Carly Rae Jepsen, and if Minhyuk hadn't been so hesitant of spooking him he might have dropped the L-word right there. As it was he just laughed, (probably too much, if the offended look on Jooheon's face was anything to go by), cupping Jooheon's round cheeks in both hands and pulling his face up to kiss him light and sweet like it was their very, very first.

Instead of saying _I love you_ and messing up the long term for the short term, Minhyuk breathed, "I like you," into Jooheon's waiting mouth and hoped it would be good enough for now.

It was hard not to push, it was always hard not to push - it wasn’t that Jooheon was his _type_ so much as it had turned out that his type had been Jooheon all along. (This thought was accompanied by the absolutely certainty that Hyungwon would never let him live that bullshit down if he ever spoke it out loud. It was what friends were good for, keeping you from getting up your own ass too much.) It was so hard not to push that he’d overshot the mark and made Jooheon ask.

He didn’t want Jooheon to have to ask for things. He wanted to give things to Jooheon before he even knew he needed them. He wanted to fulfill all his needs. He wanted.

“I want to finger you,” said Minhyuk, sitting back on his heels and dragging his hands down Jooheon’s chest, his ribs, fingertips following the convex curve of his stomach to find the crimped elastic waistband of his basketball shorts and dip underneath. He didn’t realize how much his mouth was watering until he had to swallow. "I really, really want to. I want to suck your dick and fuck you with my hand and let you pull on my hair as much as you need to, Honey."

Jooheon wrapped his arms around himself again, a blush touching the tips of his ears, his cheeks, his shoulders. “Gosh,” he said.

“Oh em gee,” Minhyuk hummed back, tipping forward again. He caught his weight with one hand on the headboard next to Jooheon’s head and brought one knee up to nudge Jooheon’s thighs even farther apart. “Is that too much?”

“No,” Jooheon said. He bit his lower lip, (Minhyuk had never been so jealous of a mouth before), and when he made the choice to give in Minhyuk could almost see the switch being flipped behind his eyes somewhere. “It’s not too much.”

“It’s good?”

Jooheon laughed, sinking back a little against the pillows. His dimples popped and his eyes curved so much, so sweetly that they very nearly disappeared. “It’s good,” he echoed back.

Minhyuk didn’t say _I love you_ that time either, but it was a close one. He stopped his mouth with the pulse of Jooheon’s carotid artery, tracing it with the tip of his tongue—

“Seeing family tomorrow,” Jooheon groaned, wriggling away. “Don’t give me any hickies.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” Minhyuk murmured against his skin, and dipped lower - his collarbones, the place where his pectoral muscles just began to swell. “Might need to now that you’ve told me not to, though.”

“Minhyuk—”

“Nowhere you can’t hide it,” Minhyuk crooned reassuringly, settling his hands on the tuck of Jooheon’s waist and curving in to tease one nipple with the tip of his tongue. Jooheon gasped, arched, shuffled his hands from his sides to his lap before finally tracing over Minhyuk’s fingers curling around his hip bones. His touch was weak and trembling and Minhyuk wanted to eat him alive, so he did - closing his teeth and drawing a gasping, shocked whine out of his boyfriend’s lungs.

Jooheon was soft and sweet and curved and perfect. His belly fit perfectly in Minhyuk’s cupped palm. His hips had the most delicious give under each fingertip, his thighs pliant and smooth, and maybe Minhyuk talked too much but he used his power for good, informing Jooheon of each of his finest, prettiest, most precious qualities in turn. This was all of them, so it took a while.

“You don’t have to say ‘and this part’ every time you move,” Jooheon said. He sounded a little bit drunk now, giddy, delirious with heat and sweat and hopefully with the way Minhyuk touched him, too, but he was still holding something back that he’d been able to let go before. “I get that you like me.” He wriggled, a grin breaking over his face. “I’m very likable.”

He was too cute. He was too, too cute, and Minhyuk _ached_ with it. “Super likable,” Minhyuk breathed, sitting up a little and letting one hand rest along the length of Jooheon’s dick. His reward was a pulse of blood thrumming under his palm as Jooheon’s anatomy responded automatically, his reward was Jooheon letting his eyes close and his head drop back and his lips part as his hips rocked up against the pressure, his reward was the heavy, moaning sigh that came out of Jooheon as he finally allowed himself to let go.

“Gonna take your shorts off,” Minhyuk said. The words came out slurred and quick, so much so that he almost wasn’t sure Jooheon understood, but when it counted Jooheon shifted his weight back onto his elbows and Minhyuk was able to pull his shorts and boxer briefs off in one smooth motion, hard dick catching on the elastic just enough that when it came free it swung up and hit Jooheon on the stomach with an audible slap. “You— I—” He threw the fabric over his shoulder - out of the corner of his eye he saw it catch on the foot of the bed, but that wasn’t important. “Wow,” he said finally, settling for efficiency over eloquence.

“Wow? What do you mean, wow?”

“I mean wow,” Minhyuk repeated, but he had already begun working down Jooheon’s chest and it came out in a muffled whisper against his skin. “Wow, you. I’m so lucky. You’re so pretty. The prettiest boy.” He nipped at a soft place along Jooheon’s rib cage and got the moaned complaint he was looking for. “Mallang mallang.”

“Be honest,” Jooheon stuttered. “You can tell me if—”

“I like,” Minhyuk said, cutting him off, “everything about you.”

Jooheon blushed, probably because he was Jooheon, (the sweetest boy in the world), and hummed a little in coy ambivalence. “Not everything,” he said, just like Minhyuk hoped he would.

“Wow,” Minhyuk said again in an exaggerated whisper, forming the word like a seductive roar as he advanced. “Wow, your eyes.”

“H-hey, that—”

“Wow,” Minhyuk continued, squeezing Jooheon’s face to puff out the apples of his cheeks so he could kiss them - one, two. “Your cheeks. I like these so much.” When he pulled back Jooheon was looking at him, a funny expression on his face. “What?”

“You mean it,” Jooheon said, but then he didn’t laugh.

A second passed, then another, until Minhyuk couldn’t take it anymore. “Lie on your back,” he whispered.

The first time he’d laid eyes on Jooheon (well, not the first time - maybe the sixth, or the eleventh) he’d wanted to see him like this. Naked, of course, skin shining just a little with a wash of afternoon sweat, laying back against Minhyuk’s pillows with sleepy, trusting eyes and his thighs open and waiting, but mostly just vulnerable. He was unzipped beyond the fly of his jeans, untied beyond his shoelaces, and Minhyuk was the one blessed enough to witness his undoing.

For the third time Minhyuk found the words _I love you_ on the tip of his tongue. He decided to put his boyfriend’s dick there instead, for safe keeping of both dick and secret alike.

Jooheon, in Minhyuk’s opinion, was a boy of wonderful and uncountable talents, and one of them was the way he held onto Minhyuk’s hair while he was getting his cock sucked - delicately and with both hands, never truly clenching his fists enough to keep the bleach-rough strands from slipping through his fingers. It was sweet, just like him, honey sweet and shy, shy, shy.

Minhyuk pulled off, breath ragged. “No one’s home,” he croaked.

“Okay?” Jooheon stared down at him, confused and horny. “I— _oh_ —”

This time when Minhyuk sank all the way down to the base of his dick Jooheon had the decency to make a noise beyond a strangled gasp, moaning and rocking up into his mouth with both hands resting loosely on the back of his head. A little more work got a little more noise; it felt like playing a game of hot and cold, pushing and prodding to find every sound he could.

It only took a second for Jooheon to get the hint, for his gasps to become less strangled and a lot more like moans. ( _Minhyuk_ , Minhyuk thought to himself, _don’t stop in the middle of this blowjob to sing Phantom of the Opera even though Jooheon_ is _your angel of music_.) He’d had the forethought to get the lube out of his nightstand so it’d be easy to grab, thank god, and the curtains glowed with mid-afternoon light as he sat back and squirted some out onto the fingers of his left hand.

“Oh,” Jooheon said, and then he was stiffening up. “Right, sorry, I forgot. Okay.”

“It’s only fun if you’re having fun,” Minhyuk whined, spanking him lightly on the inner thigh. “Do you want to do this?”

“Yeah,” Jooheon said. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I promise I do, I’m just…”

“Scared?” Minhyuk offered.

Jooheon coughed out a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s so stupid.”

“Mm.” Minhyuk leaned in and kissed him, then kissed him again, then again. “Not really. Want me to surprise you?”

“Yeah,” Jooheon sighed against his mouth.

The surprise was that Minhyuk was tired of waiting - not that that should have been a surprise to anyone - and the confirmation had only just left Jooheon’s mouth when he slipped his hand down between his legs. Jooheon let out a tiny yelp, but that turned into a gasping moan as Minhyuk’s mouth found his cock again.

He was so, so tempted just to trap him there and play with him, push him to his limits before pulling him back, but Jooheon’s hand tightened in his hair. “Minhyuk—”

“Call me hyung,” Minhyuk gasped. “Call me hyung, baby.”

“Hyung,” Jooheon whimpered obediently, petulantly. He twisted his hips, wriggling downward. Shameless? Was that the word? “Hyung, please—”

Minhyuk made a mental note to tease Jooheon over how much he whined to be filled up at some later date, when he wasn’t so concerned with the actual filling up required. “Okay, baby. Talk to me, all right?”

Jooheon tried to say “yeah” but his voice cracked right in the middle as Minhyuk pressed one finger into him for the first time.

“Good?” Minhyuk murmured.

“Yeah,” Jooheon said back, voice clipped. “Not yet, it’s— a-ah, hyung—”

 _God_ that sounded so fucking good in Jooheon’s mouth, the way his american accent twisted it when Minhyuk pushed in a little bit more, a little bit faster. “I love this,” he whispered, tongue thick in his mouth as he nuzzled affectionately at Jooheon’s thigh. He hooked his finger and dragged it out slow, feeling everything carefully, feeling the vibration as Jooheon moaned and shivered at the sensation. “You’re as tight and soft on the inside as you are on the outside.”

Jooheon groaned, tapping roughly on the back of his head. "That's so cheesy," he said. "Can't believe I have such a cheesy— ah, jesus—"

Minhyuk cut him off by biting him, nipping at the soft swell of his belly just above his pretty cock. _Nowhere you can't hide it_ , he'd said, and he decided that his favorite part of Jooheon's body was good enough a place as any to start leaving his calling card. (Most of Jooheon's body was Minhyuk's favorite part, but that was beside the point.)

He'd get in trouble for being cheesy if he said anything he felt like saying because it was all cheesy, thick and chewy and stretchy like the chub of Jooheon's hip between his teeth, and anyway he couldn't bring himself to talk over the way Jooheon swore, head falling back and hands grasping - one in his hair and the other in the sheets. He sounded so good, he sounded too fucking good, Minhyuk wondered what he'd been doing before the Sunday morning Jooheon had showed up in his life. Waiting? He had to have just been waiting.

Jooheon hissed in a breath suddenly, twitching back. "Is that two?"

"Still one," Minhyuk replied, reluctantly detaching his mouth from Jooheon's inner thigh. "All the way in. It's thicker lower down."

Jooheon groaned. "But it's already so much, I can't..."

"We'll go slow," Minhyuk said, starting to slip out of him. "It's okay if—"

Jooheon fumbled, reaching down to grab Minhyuk's forearm to keep him from pulling out. "It's a lot," he huffed, cheeks flushed. "I never said it was too much."

“Fuck,” Minhyuk breathed. “You’re so fucking cute, bumblebee, I wanna make you cum so hard.” He pushed in deep again, all the way in to where it had made Jooheon jump the first time. Jooheon gasped a little, bit his lip, but this time he moved into it and Minhyuk could already feel him beginning to relax. “Can I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Jooheon said, breathless. “Can you?”

“Mm. Good question.” Minhyuk licked his lips. “Wanna find out together?”

Jooheon nodded quickly, head lolling a little like he was drunk. His brow was knit and his eyes squinting, lips parting with an almost inaudible pop, and Minhyuk melted - sank back down to the mattress between Jooheon’s legs and went back to work with every single trick he had. The sweetest boy in the world was asking to cum, he couldn’t very well let him down. That was probably a crime against humanity. He was too young to go to prison.

He knew what he was doing and Jooheon was deliciously easy, sensitive and new to everything. Bless him, he didn’t pull Minhyuk’s hair until he was about to cum, when he was arching up and moaning and at a loss for words. “Wait,” he choked out suddenly, pulling Minhyuk up and away and off of his dick. “Wait, hold on—”

Minhyuk blinked tears out of his eyes. “You okay?”

“Weren’t you…?” Jooheon swallowed. Blushed. “We - I was gonna bottom—”

“Oh, baby boy,” Minhyuk sighed, lightly pushing a second fingertip alongside the first. Jooheon bit his lip and pulled away from the discomfort automatically. “There’s no way you’re taking dick today. Let me get you off.”

Jooheon fell back, pouting. “What about you?”

“We’ll talk about it,” Minhyuk rasped. “Now shut up, I wanna watch you come.”

His fingers were thin, but Jooheon still cried out when he pushed the second the rest of the way in, reaching up to cling to the headboard as his body arched into the sensation and tried to escape at the exact same time. He was tight and hot and Minhyuk could feel the thump of his pulse where he pressed gently with the pads of his fingers.

"S'too weird," Jooheon gasped, but writhed like it felt like heaven and when Minhyuk started to move away he pulled him right back, shaking his head wildly. "I can't— hyung, please—"

When Minhyuk finally gave in and touched Jooheon's dick it barely took any friction at all to push him over the edge, shaking and gasping for breath as he spilled his release all over his chest and stomach. Minhyuk couldn't help but hold his breath and focus everything on that moment when Jooheon's body surrendered to him, the feel of his perfect warm cock throbbing like something out of the kind of het romance novels Minhyuk had practically inhaled as a curious adolescent.

Something came over him. Jooheon lay on his back on the mattress with his eyes closed, cum painting his stomach, breathing hard and shuddering. Minhyuk leaned forward, catching his weight on the headboard, and said, "Joa, jagi?"

Jooheon laughed, and Minhyuk was offended for all of half a second before being overcome all over again by how Jooheon was the sweetest boy in the world. "Joa," he replied, still breathless. He opened his eyes - just barely, lashes threaded together - and smiled.

"Sarang hae," Minhyuk said. 

He could see the question flicker over Jooheon's face so before it had a chance to come out of his mouth he kissed it from his lips, pushing up on his knees to rest their foreheads together. They were both sweating and their stringy bangs clung together when they pulled back apart but they just laughed more until they were out of breath all over again and Jooheon said, "Now you come," in the smallest, cutest, shiest voice that Minhyuk nearly came right there.

He didn't, though. Instead something dark and red and thick wrapped around his lungs. "I wanna fuck your thighs," Minhyuk said. "Can I please fuck your thighs? I— I've been thinking about fucking your thighs for, god—"

Jooheon sat up quickly, reaching up to loop one arm around Minhyuk's shoulders. His pupils were dilated so huge that his eyes looked almost black. "Shut up," he said. "How do you want me?"

"Flip over," Minhyuk rasped, pulling Jooheon in even tighter by his waist despite his direction. He was still in his pajamas and with Jooheon naked and splattered with his own cum straddling his lap he felt unbelievably powerful. He'd been handed something worth more than the sum of the rest of the universe put together and here he was being asked how he wanted it. The only true answer was Every Way, but he'd happily start from Flip Over and work his way out from there.

It was still slick between Jooheon's thighs when Minhyuk slipped one hand between them but he squirted out more lube anyway, gently nudging Jooheon's legs apart to make sure he didn't miss anything. After this he'd have to put his whole bed through the wash but he didn't care even a little bit - a necessary casualty, really, and if anything it made him feel disgustingly warm knowing that Jooheon was lying face down in a puddle of his own come and it was happening in _Minhyuk's bed_.

Jooheon lay there with his hips cocked up and his head on a pillow and his eyes closed and his breath coming fast through pink, spit-slick lips. "You okay?" Minhyuk murmured, swinging his legs over one after the other to stand next to the bed just long enough to slip off his loose pajama bottoms.

"Come fuck me," Jooheon mumbled into the pillowcase, pushing his hips up even higher. His hands curled into loose fists. "Hurry up before I chicken out."

"Don't want that," Minhyuk said, stepping out of his pajamas so hurriedly that he caught one foot on the waistband and almost faceplanted on the floor. He saved it by catching his weight on the mattress with his knee and used the momentum to stumble onto and over Jooheon's legs until he was straddling the backs of his knees. "How do you want me to—"

"Just come," Jooheon moaned. "I want you to come."

One of the first English words Minhyuk remembered consciously memorizing was 'gorgeous' and he'd never known why, but for a second he wondered if it was just for this very moment. "Tell me if it's not good," Minhyuk murmured, the words catching a little in the back of his throat, and nudged his cock between Jooheon's gorgeous, gorgeous thighs.

He pressed one hand on the small of Jooheon's back, pinning him to the mattress, and sank down between his thighs so far that he felt the rough weave of his cheap cotton sheets brush over the head of his cock.

Jooheon writhed but didn't push away, rolling his hips and gasping for breath as Minhyuk compressed his diaphragm. "Jesus," he whispered as Minhyuk slowly pulled back. (He couldn't go any faster yet, not if he didn't want to cut this abysmally short with a premature ejaculation.) Jooheon slipped one hand down between his stomach and the mattress and when Minhyuk pushed in a second time he felt the tips of Jooheon's fingers as he struggled to adjust.

Minhyuk tried to regain rational thought, if only for a few seconds. "Do you need—"

"Don't stop," Jooheon choked out, and it occurred Minhyuk all at once that Jooheon was stroking himself. While his thighs were being fucked, he was stroking himself while his thighs were being fucked.

"You're _trouble_ , bumblebee," Minhyuk hissed, and hauled Jooheon upright mercilessly by his shoulders. He caught him in a loose headlock with one arm and snaked the other around Jooheon's waist to push his hands away from his slowly stiffening cock in order take care of it himself. "Hold onto the headboard."

Lasting much longer took a near-herculean effort but at one point he made Jooheon buck back against him and gasp out the word _hyung_ like a prayer so he didn't feel that bad when he shot past the point of no return at a supersonic speed, pulling back and steadying the base of his dick just to see his cum splatter over Jooheon's lower back like icing.

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk said, finally sagging forward. He managed to catch himself on the wall with one hand and shifted the other - spreading his fingers wide over the swell of chub on Jooheon’s lower stomach, pulling him in close to nuzzle breathlessly at the nape of his neck. “Oh my god, baby. Fuck, you’re so gorgeous.” He pressed a kiss to the knob of vertebra on the base of Jooheon’s neck. “Did you just cum?”

“I don’t have any sperm left after the first time,” Jooheon breathed, leaning back into him. “Why do you ask so many stupid questions?”

Minhyuk felt giddy and stupid so he laughed, sitting back on his heels and pulling Jooheon back with him until they were tangled in the sheets together side by side (and over and under and around too), naked and sticky and too hot and delirious with sex. They were sticky and too hot but Minhyuk was completely and utterly delirious and he couldn’t stop pressing sleepy, persistent kisses to every part of Jooheon he could reach. “Shh,” he whispered, pushing up on one elbow to comb Jooheon’s hair back from his forehead with his fingers and kiss along his hairline.

After a second Jooheon closed his eyes. “I know what sarang hae means,” he said.

Maybe it was just him, but Minhyuk could swear the temperature in the room dropped by at least 5 degrees. Something raised goosebumps on his skin, anyway, and that was his best guess. “Good job,” he cooed. “Learning Korean.”

Jooheon opened his eyes again and took this opportunity to give him a Look.

“Don’t - don’t worry about it.” He groaned at the expression on Jooheon’s face, rolling over onto his back. “Don’t look at me like that, I don’t know the right words yet. I’m bilingual. That means I’m bad at two languages at the same time,” he added helpfully, picking up his head, “just so you know.”

“You know I’ve started picking that up?” When Minhyuk looked Jooheon was grinning over at him. “I’m gonna go get a warm washcloth and a glass of water, you want anything?”

“A cuddle,” Minhyuk sighed, wrapping his arms around himself.

Jooheon laughed after a brief pause, like he wasn’t sure how to respond at first, like his programming took a second to kick in with sudden and unexpected input. “In a minute,” he said, pushing up off the bed and walking toward the door to the master bathroom. “I’m covered in jizz.”

“Me next.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Minhyuk swallowed and sat up in bed, suddenly and miraculously reinvigorated. “You can keep walking away from me if you need to. Look, I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave. Honey? Baby? … Bumblebee?”

Jooheon came back with a damp washcloth, his skin still shining a little where he’d wiped himself off first. “It’s a new one,” he said, handing it over as he gasped around a long and dramatic drink of water before tumbling back into bed and flopping over onto his back with a sigh.

“So,” Minhyuk said after a few moments of quiet. He’d been multitasking, studiously scrubbing his hands and panicking at the same time.

“So?”

“Did you have fun?”

Jooheon stared at the ceiling and let out a really really long breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Yes. That was the most fun I’ve had in my life.”

Minhyuk giggled because he couldn’t not (and anyway why would he try not to?), rolling in close to Jooheon’s side to nuzzle at his ribs. “You’re so cute,” he said between kisses, trailing up from his side to his sternum and gradually up his chest until finally reaching the perfect rosebud kiss of his perfect rosebud mouth. “I want to watch you cum all the time.”

“I don’t think that’s humanly possible,” Jooheon mumbled, eyes closing.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Minhyuk sighed, dropping his head down to rest on Jooheon’s shoulder. The room had been almost unbearably hot only minutes ago but now the sweat on his skin was beginning to cool him off and Jooheon’s warmth was beyond welcome. He pressed into it and thought to himself, _How can I sleep when I’m this excited?_ only moments before sinking into unconsciousness.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: smut and foreshadowing.  
> happy valentine's day!

Jooheon woke up.

This was a multi-step process that could take up to fourteen minutes on a good day, and on bad days didn't necessarily complete until the next morning entirely, but today seemed to take only seconds. His arm was asleep, for one thing. He was too hot and yet also too cold at the same time, and neither in ideal places. He was naked, and he wasn't alone.

The next step in Jooheon's awakening process was usually opening his eyes, which, today, proved a challenge.

"Oh my god," he muttered blearily, scrubbing sleep boogers out of his eyes and sitting up.

Then he said, "Oh right," because he remembered falling asleep in Minhyuk's bedroom and that explained how he'd woken up in Minhyuk's bedroom.

"Oh," he said a third time, remembering everything else too. He lay back down again. "Right."

Minhyuk was asleep next to him, splayed out naked and unashamed across the tangled sheets, one foot shaking rhythmically as he dreamed. By rights he should have looked terrible, but instead he just glowed. His lips were chapped and pink and bitten, his hair fell every which way and caught light like sparks in amber. There was pink in his cheeks from the heat and a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Also his dick was big. That too.

It wasn't that Jooheon didn't know. Last week Minhyuk had happily announced to the entire table that his penis was "twenty-ish" centimeters long, and not very many days after that Jooheon had finally had his very first opportunity to find out for himself what "twenty-ish" actually meant. (He didn't know how it hadn't happened earlier, but as the usual suspect was Cowardice he supposed it could be convincingly implicated here as well.)

The last time he'd touched a dick, he'd told Changkyun earlier that day, was two days ago. He didn't mention that the last time he'd touched a dick had also been the _first_ time he'd put his bare hand onto Minhyuk Lee's actual unclothed penis, but Changkyun didn't need to know that. He'd never be able to let it go.

Jooheon, it must be said, had seen some dicks in his life. A few of them he'd even had inside his mouth; it was always a pretty weird experience from what he could recall, digging through moth-eaten memories of the scandalous house parties in college which had helped him make roughly one friend and, also, a lot of brief acquaintances whom he would now never be able to look in the eye. Most of the aforementioned dicks were what he thought of as average - somewhere around the size of his own - and even the outliers had been somewhere between three and seven inches, though Changkyun had told him more than once that he needed to work on his spatial awareness.

Minhyuk's penis was a true outlier and the first words to come out of Jooheon's mouth when he saw it at full hardness for the first time were: "Oh no."

They'd been sitting in Jooheon's car at the back of a dark strip mall parking lot way past the time all of the employees had gone home, drinking large cokes from McDonalds and sharing fries like a couple of teenagers who had nowhere to go on a Friday night. 'Sharing' may have been too strong a word. 'Fighting over' was a lot closer, at least until they were all gone, at which point Jooheon and Minhyuk decided simultaneously that it was time to make out in Jooheon's car, _also_ like a couple of teenagers with nowhere to go on a Friday night.

Minhyuk's mouth had been pink and shining with spit when he pulled back to gasp for breath, lips swollen with near-desperate kisses, and Jooheon hadn't been able to stop himself from reaching out over the center console to press his palm gently but firmly along the line of Minhyuk's hard cock.

"That's a fold in my jeans," Minhyuk laughed, groaning and rocking his hips against Jooheon's hand regardless. "When it's hard I have to— okay, here." He pulled up the hem of his shirt to expose the fly of his jeans, fumbling with the button, and when it came free Jooheon nearly expected the force of it to pop it out of the denim altogether but somehow it held on to fight another day.

He'd pulled it up along the V of his hip and tucked it into the waistband of his boxer briefs because there was no room for it otherwise, and the dark pink and precum-slick head poked out of the elastic for lack of fabric to cover it.

Minhyuk slipped his thumb under the elastic - and then hesitated, pulling his hand back. "It's good?" he murmured. "It's okay?"

"It's good," Jooheon croaked. He imagined that Minhyuk probably looked worried, but he wasn't about to look up to find out. "I mean - yeah, it's okay. Can I...?"

The tip of Minhyuk's pink tongue flickered out of his mouth to wet his lips as he turned a little to sit back against the passenger side door, slyly pulling his shirt up a little bit more to show the skin of his stomach. “If you want,” he said, slipping the waistband down with his other.

“Oh no,” Jooheon said.

"What do you mean, 'oh no?'" Minhyuk had asked. He'd laughed at the time but it was in the tight, nervous sort of way Jooheon had started to recognize as his Oh No I've Spooked My Favorite Bisexual laugh. "It's not that bad, is it?"

"No," Jooheon lied. "Sorry," he said, which was true. "You have, uh, you have a nice. Penis."

The problem was that Minhyuk actually did have a really nice penis. Jooheon was far from a connoisseur but he had at some point stumbled over a few preferences, and Minhyuk's dick checked off almost all of his very personal and private boxes. (Jooheon hadn't known he had a box titled Upsettingly Large, but if the rolling heat between his legs was any indication Minhyuk checked off that one too.) It was a nice penis. Jooheon kind of wanted to put it in his mouth.

"Can I put it in my mouth?" he asked, not able to look Minhyuk in the eye as he spoke, instead choosing to stare his boyfriend in the dick. The dick, despite all logic, seemed almost to stare back. (What was that quote? If you stare into the void...)

“Yeah,” Minhyuk stuttered. “What? Yes. God, yeah."

Penises, Jooheon found, all pretty much tasted the same - like skin, really, which shouldn't have surprised him - and Minhyuk's penis tasted exactly like a penis. But better, somehow, the taste laced with the way Minhyuk gasped as Jooheon's breath fanned over the head of his cock, the way he carded a hand loosely through Jooheon's hair with nervous, gentle fingers. Jooheon barely had to touch him to draw out a hoarse whimper and god, the taste of desperation was intoxicating.

They'd gotten caught by a security guard and had to pretend to be related to get out of trouble, Minhyuk spinning a moving tale about their fathers, twin brothers who grew up the closest friends until their fraternal bond was broken when they fell for the same woman and now refused to speak to each other, forcing their sons to meet behind their backs to help reconcile their two halves of the family before their ailing grandfather passed away without seeing his sons happy together once more. It wasn't the best date Jooheon had ever been on in his life, but then again it hadn't been the worst either. He’d never thought about how having the same last name as your boyfriend could be so convenient.

In the middle of a lazy Sunday afternoon, far away from strip malls and center consoles and security guards, Jooheon's demigod of a boyfriend rolled over sleepily in bed to throw one arm around his waist and heave a huge contented sigh. "G'morning," he mumbled, lips catching on the bare, sweat-streaked skin of Jooheon's arm.

"I think it's at least 4," Jooheon said. “Not that it matters. You hungry?”

“Why, you offering?”

“We both know I can’t cook.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Okay, _I_ can make fun of myself because it’s _me_ —”

Minhyuk cackled, pushing up to plant a kiss on Jooheon’s temple. “Okay, okay. I don’t know, I could eat.” He sat back and glanced down. “Mostly feeling thirsty.”

“There’s water,” Jooheon started to offer, but instead of letting him finish Minhyuk dipped in close to kiss him, pushing him back against the pillows a little with the force of it.

“Different kind of thirsty,” Minhyuk murmured, pulling away just enough to speak.

“Oh,” Jooheon breathed. He couldn’t help but chase Minhyuk’s mouth, hands reaching up to cradle his knife-sharp jaw. “That kind of thirsty.”

“ _That_ kind of thirsty,” Minhyuk echoed back, sitting up to move one leg over until he was straddling Jooheon’s lap. Their skin was hot where it met, catching warmth between them. “I’m greedy.” He curved in to kiss him again, speaking into his mouth. “Wanna ride you, Honeybee.”

“Holy shit,” Jooheon whimpered, hands tightening where he’d laid them awkwardly on Minhyuk’s thighs. “Really?”

“Been thinking about it for ages.” The confession was handled almost casually, Minhyuk tossing it out like it was as important as a bus schedule, but when he leaned over to grab a condom out of the top drawer of his nightstand Jooheon caught the telltale blush at the tips of his ears. “Might’ve come to it a couple times.”

“Might have,” Jooheon croaked, watching, enchanted, as Minhyuk squeezed a liberal amount of lube onto the fingers of his left hand. “You _might have_ come to this?”

“Couple times,” Minhyuk breathed, coming up on his knees to prop himself up on the wall just above Jooheon’s head with this right hand and reaching between his legs with his left. “Your cock is so pretty. Can’t stop thinking a— a _-ah—_ ”

For a few seconds Jooheon had doubted very much if he had it in him for round two but that had been before Minhyuk had straddled him and said they were gonna fuck and started fucking… _fucking_ himself with one hand, and now he couldn’t think about anything else. He’d come over here with his heart in his throat and his stomach in knots and his head full of lust and fear but the fear was all gone now, there was just lust left, Minhyuk fluttered his eyes closed and bit his lower lip as he found just the right spot and god— Jooheon wanted.

“Put the condom on,” Minhyuk whispered, voice tight. “Hurry up.”

“Okay,” Jooheon said, scrambling for the foil square Minhyuk had left for him on the mattress. “Fuck, you’re so…” ( _Sarang hae._ ) “I like you,” he finished stupidly, finally getting the wrapper open and nearly fumbling the whole thing in the process.

“Likewise.” Minhyuk laughed when he spoke, but it caught in his chest and he couldn’t seem to look away from Jooheon’s hands, the condom, his dick. The second he pulled his hands back Minhyuk shifted forward, crawling on his knees until he was exactly in what he deemed the right place, resting his hands on Jooheon’s shoulders. “You okay, baby?”

Jooheon just nodded - he was too stupid for anything else, too thick-headed and stiff - and when Minhyuk dropped down he had the chance to use his saved breath for a moan as waves of heat and pressure rolled through him. Minhyuk was... he felt... the way he moved… Jooheon didn’t have any words for it other than _tight_ and _hot_ and _perfect_.

Minhyuk trembled around him, hands clenched tight on his shoulders and eyes closed and head thrown back, breathing roughly through chapped lips. Jooheon cautiously squeezed his hips. “You okay?” he asked, trading jobs with Minhyuk for a second.

“Your cock,” Minhyuk breathed out after another couple of seconds, “is a gift.”

Jooheon couldn’t say if it was his pulse or Minhyuk’s that throbbed in his ears, (probably both, come to think of it), but it didn’t matter. “And that’s... good?”

Minhyuk tipped his head forward again and nodded, neck loose. “Now look who’s asking stupid questions,” he slurred, and pushed up to pull almost all the way off of Jooheon’s dick before sinking right back down again. He said something, choked it out, something in Korean that Jooheon had certainly never heard growing up, but then kept going.

It probably shouldn’t have surprised him that Minhyuk was impressively loud, but it did - just a little bit, not much, and anyway when Minhyuk sank down on his cock and gasped out a heavy _aegi, aegi jebal_ in that sweet coarse tone, really— it wasn’t like he had any complaints. (Jooheon knew all of those words. _Baby, please_.) He had his dick up along one leg, stiff and leaking precum on the skin, pinning it in place with one forearm as he steadied himself on Jooheon’s waist in order to bounce on Jooheon’s actual cock.

“Jesus,” Jooheon hissed, barely able to summon the strength to thrust upward but doing so regardless. It was so much more difficult to make himself stop, and anyway why would he want to? Minhyuk looked like a demigod, but the kind of demigod that had maybe gotten a touch of nymphomania stirred into the batter - an illegitimate son of Dionysus, glowing and moaning in absolutely worldly pleasure.

Minhyuk looked so fucking good, sounded so fucking good, _felt_ so fucking good. A few minutes ago Jooheon doubted he’d had it in him for round two but he was already starting to feel like a spring, coiling tighter and tighter every time Minhyuk moved. He tightened his grip on Minhyuk’s thighs and tried to hold on, tried to hold back—

“Oh,” Minhyuk breathed, and came.

He’d seen Minhyuk come before but never like this, never this close. His eyes rolled back in his head and his whole body tightened and for a second, two seconds, he was absolutely and uncharacteristically silent. He didn’t even breathe - just froze with every muscle clenching all at once, just shivering, just his dick twitching as he came untouched all over Jooheon’s stomach.

In half a second the spell was broken and Minhyuk moaned so rough and high and whiny that Jooheon could feel it, the heat so tight around him that if not for Minhyuk’s weight keeping him seated Jooheon almost wondered if the force of it would push him out entirely.

Minhyuk shuddered, finally falling forward to catch himself on the headboard with one hand. It took him a few seconds to catch his breath, resting his cheek on Jooheon’s head to keep from tipping over weak and boneless, but he laughed as soon as he could - sooner, the laughter catching in his tight, rough throat. “Never done that before,” he rasped, breathing heavily right into Jooheon’s ear as he nuzzled against his temple. “Holy shit. Holy shit, bumblebee, you feel so fucking good. Just right for me.” He laughed again, leaving a trail of kisses from Jooheon’s hairline, to his eyebrow, to the corner of his eye, to his cheekbone. “Fuck. That felt so good.”

Jooheon’s pulsed thrummed through him as Minhyuk shifted his weight. He was relaxed, the kind of relaxed only a really good orgasm can provide, and the feeling of it around him was just as good as the tight, hot grip from before. For once he couldn’t think of anything to say so instead he curved forward, rolling to push Minhyuk down on his back on the mattress. Something in the back of his head flickered an urgent message in semaphore, but he’d been sick and missed that boy scout meeting so it didn’t do him any good.

He didn’t get the chance to ask; Minhyuk was already nodding, pulling him back in with his heels, eyelashes fluttering closed and lips bitten, parted to let out a tight, high _jebal_ that Jooheon didn’t have the power to resist. It felt too good to go fast and anyway Minhyuk hummed a curling note of hot approval every time he snapped his hips at the end of a stroke, but after a couple minutes he was too tired and too overheated to keep going.

Lying next to each other on Minhyuk’s unexpectedly big bed with their heads at the foot of the mattress and their legs tangled together, Jooheon sighed and said: “I can’t believe you got off untouched before I did.”

Minhyuk laughed and poked Jooheon in the cheek until he smiled enough for his dimples to come out. “Me neither,” he admitted. “Your dick is a really… a really nice shape.” Then he blushed, uncharacteristically embarrassed, and hid his face in the hollow between Jooheon’s shoulder and his neck. “You’re pretty. I like you.”

( _Sarang hae_.)

Jooheon couldn’t make himself speak because he knew that he’d try to ask a question and end up saying something else, admitting to something he wasn’t ready to acknowledge even to himself. How long had they been dating? Almost two months? Jooheon had dropped the L Word before but not usually because he meant it (a fact of which he was not proud) but it had been after several months, and usually with the word ‘too’ tacked onto the end because what else do you say when somebody tells you they love you and you don’t feel it back, “yikes?”

But today he couldn’t open his mouth, his boyfriend tucked in close against him, for fear that he’d show his hand way, way too soon. When did he get this gross?

“I still haven’t told my parents,” Jooheon said instead, swallowing everything else. “Is that bad?”

“Would you have told them by now if I was a girl?” Minhyuk mumbled against his chest. “Don’t think about it too hard.”

Somewhere out in the house there was a bang. A clatter. The unmistakable sound of glass breaking, and then a heavy, busy silence.

“I thought you said no one was home,” Jooheon hissed, sitting up quickly and snatching at the sheets to cover himself as though that would be helpful in any way whatsoever. Minhyuk’s bedroom was an oven but a chill ran through him.

“No one _was_ home,” Minhyuk said, pushing up on his elbows and turning to glare at the door. “Hyungwon wasn’t gonna be home until at least—” He squinted at the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Oh. An hour ago.”

“Oh my god,” Jooheon said.

“He might not have heard anything,” Minhyuk cooed, petting him gently on the arm and trying to pull him back down.

“There’s no way he didn’t hear anything,” Jooheon whispered urgently. “You’re so loud.”

“Mm. You’re welcome.” Minhyuk sighed. Made a face. “Do you want me to go out and see?”

The floorboards outside the bedroom door creaked. A small, careful knock sounded at the door. “Hello,” came Hyungwon’s voice, muffled by the wood. “Are you done?”

“Say no,” Jooheon hissed.

“Yeah,” Minhyuk called out. “What did you break?”

There was a brief and heavy pause, and then Hyungwon said something in Korean that ended with what Jooheon remembered as the most formal apology possible.

Minhyuk sighed. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he yelled. “He broke my bong,” he added, this to Jooheon, as he scooted to the edge of the bed, “and he’s too stoned to clean it up.”

Jooheon considered this. “You go to Beth for your weed too, huh?”

“Beth?” The _th_ sound came out thin, making the name almost like _Bess_ in Minhyuk’s mouth. It was possible that Jooheon would stop being infatuated with Minhyuk’s drawling accent but today was not that day. “She sells dried herbs and calls it marijuana.”

“Oh my god.” The realization washed over him and he couldn’t help but cough out a laugh. “She sells you the white girl weed. Caucasus Skunk, right?”

“White—?”

Jooheon flapped a hand at him, turning to the used condom. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you the hook up. Me and Beth took math together in high school and I introduced her to her girlfriend at senior prom.”

“Every time I think you couldn’t get any more perfect,” Minhyuk sighed, pulling on his jeans, “you prove me wrong.”

“Stop.”

“No,” Minhyuk replied, pulling a fresh t-shirt over his head. His hair went everywhere when he popped out of the collar and he looked like the sun, pulling Jooheon into his orbit with a laugh and a kiss and a fingertip under his chin. “Never. Come out when you’re cleaned up,” he added, getting back onto his feet and turning toward the door. “I want to feed you.”

“I’m not hungry,” Jooheon said.

“Doesn’t change how I feel,” Minhyuk sang, pulling the door closed behind him. “We’ve got _bagels_.”

 

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“They’re the _good_ bagels,” Hyungwon mumbled through a mouth stuffed absolutely full of quality bagel. “Kihyun. He knows bagels.”

“Yeah,” Jooheon replied. They stood in the hallway outside the main bathroom, watching Minhyuk irritably sweep up the shards of his second favorite bong. (It had been cleverly shaped in the image of a cup of boba tea and Minhyuk felt a certain kinship with it, as he too was full of water and smoke and outright lies.) “Is there smoked salmon in this?”

“Lox schmear,” Hyungwon replied. Watching him pronounce the unfamiliar sounds around not only the bagel but also his lips was, in a word, fascinating. (When Jooheon had opened the bathroom door weed-infused steam billowed out to meet him and he was pretty damn sure that now he was at least a little bit high.)

(Jooheon had a brief and horrifying flashback of watching an episode of Tool Time with his parents, in which Buzz Lightyear caught Simba with weed and gave him a stern talking to in a gazebo. Then he thought about three white guys fucking in a gazebo, and then he thought about the way Minhyuk’s eyes had rolled back in his head when he came untouched for the very first time, and then he thought _I’m definitely stoned_.)

“You hotboxed it?” asked Jooheon.

“Not on purpose.”

“I told you,” Minhyuk grumbled, wiping down the linoleum with a damp paper towel to lift up the last of the shattered glass. “The fan is broken. No hotboxing until Kihyun’s back to fix it.”

“Did you tell me in English?”

Minhyuk looked up. “Asshole,” he said. He shook his bangs out of his face. “Bumblebee, ask him about his DJing.”

Hyungwon went pink and choked on his bagel.

“My friend Hoseok’s in the club scene,” Jooheon said. “Do you have a stage name or something? He might have mentioned you.”

“H dot one,” Minhyuk said. “Get it? Hyungwon? H.one? No?” He pouted. “I helped come up with it.”

“Actually that sounds really familiar.” It was hard to keep track of all the stuff Hoseok talked about but that name had definitely come up. “You wear a mask, right?”

Hyungwon blinked at him, stunned. “Yeah,” he said. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Hoseok,” Jooheon repeated, then hesitated. “I think he uses some other name when he’s out but I don’t remember what it is, I haven’t partied like that with him since college. Ah, hyung—”

It was Minhyuk’s turn to freeze, hand still on Jooheon’s ass. Hyungwon turned slowly to look at him. He swallowed, and smiled. “Hyung?” he said.

Minhyuk muttered something in Korean, turning and grabbing Jooheon’s wrist to pull him out towards the living room. “Ignore him,” he said. “He owes me a bong. Do you wanna play Mario Kart?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's smut again

“You’re late,” said Changkyun, not looking up from the menu. “I’ve been sitting here for five minutes.”

“Which means you were late as well,” Kihyun said, sliding into the booth across from him. “I’m so sorry to ruin your plans to be fashionably late.”

“Oh,” Changkyun sneered, “are you just so busy and important at your fancy business job?”

“Yes,” Kihyun replied, watching Changkyun’s eyes track his hands as he unbuttoned his cuffs and slowly rolled his sleeves up his forearms. “I am.”

Changkyun had texted him all week, starting on Sunday afternoon, mostly complaints and weak insults and attempts at baiting him into snapping. He’d demanded that Kihyun meet with him as soon as possible.

Kihyun had made him wait a full day before replying with a simple: _Schedule’s packed. I can pencil you in for Thursday._ Changkyun had waited all of three minutes to come back with: _PENCIL ME IN fuck you very much_

And then: _What time on thursday_

Hook, line, and sinker.

A waiter came by, peppy and delighted to have literally anyone at all in her section during an abominably slow Thursday happy hour, and Kihyun felt Changkyun’s gaze on him the entire time he was ordering the first round. “And an Asahi,” he finished, then glanced across the table. “Would you like one too?”

Changkyun looked away quickly as though trying to act like he hadn’t been watching. “If you’re buying,” he muttered under his breath, eyes still scanning the menu.

“That should go without saying,” Kihyun said, pulling out his wallet and handing his credit card to the waiter. “A second Asahi, please. And start a tab.”

She’d barely stepped around the corner when Changkyun very nearly launched himself across the table. “Are you gonna explain?” he hissed. “Why the fuck did you name yourself ‘Daddy’ in my phone?”

“Do I look,” Kihyun said calmly, “like the kind of person to call himself ‘Daddy?’”

Changkyun looked stricken. Kihyun had spent only a few cumulative hours with him but could already tell that ‘stricken’ wasn’t a typical state. “Well,” he said, and then closed his mouth. “It takes all kinds.”

“I didn’t put my number into your phone,” Kihyun said. “And if I had it wouldn’t have been under ‘Daddy.’”

“You didn’t have any complaints before.” Changkyun sat back in the booth again, looking mollified and annoyed at the same time. “What _would_ you’ve put it in as?”

“Certainly not ‘Bratty Baby Boy’ in all caps,” Kihyun said, drawing his phone out of his pocket and setting it on the table with a gentle click. “Unlike some people I could mention.”

“I,” Changkyun whispered, face going pale and then red almost magically - a mood ring in the shape of a person. “I didn’t. I’m nobody’s baby boy.”

“An independent baby boy who don’t need no Daddy,” Kihyun said, mostly to himself. He enjoyed the look on Changkyun’s face when he said it, though. (Never let it be said that Kihyun had no guilty pleasures, no matter what Minhyuk had to say about his ability to have fun.) “If _you_ didn’t enter your number into my phone like this, and _I_ didn’t enter your number into my phone like this, then who did? A ghost?”

“Probably a ghost,” Changkyun said. He looked curiously off-balance and after the embarrassment Kihyun had gone through at the gay bar the weekend before last he couldn’t help but enjoy the schadenfreude. “I didn’t get _that_ drunk.”

“You got a little drunk,” Kihyun said.

“Not too drunk,” Changkyun replied. He’d started sliding down in the booth but it was so slow and gradual that at first Kihyun wondered if he’d been imagining it. “I’m not an idiot.”

Kihyun, as a general rule, was attracted to confidence. The type of person who knew they were out of every league and was looking for the same. But then Changkyun, a guy he’d known (albeit biblically) for roughly six cumulative hours, started to wilt gently in front of him - deflating into a puddle of confusion and self-doubt in a way that normally turned Kihyun off - and he was surprised to find his resolve hardening.

“I can tell you’re not an idiot,” Kihyun said, and, curiously, meant it. “It’s a mystery. Maybe one of us is a sleepwalker.”

“Don’t remember you getting much sleep,” Changkyun muttered, and Kihyun almost said something very regrettable in response - saved only by their waiter, sweeping up to the table with a tray of beer and edamame.

Changkyun stayed quiet even after she’d left, adjusting his slouch into a curve as he hunched over the menu, flipping through the pages as though bitterly absorbed in its contents. “You liked being called Daddy,” he said eventually, slapping the menu closed and reaching for his beer. “I have vivid memories of being told to call you Daddy.”

“I like to keep my daily life separate. Edamame? They’re not stingy with the salt here, it’s a revelation to pair it with a good Asian light beer.”

“What are you, some kind of foodie?”

“Have you ever seen the movie Tampopo?”

“There’s a shitty Japanese-style noodle place near my parents’ place called Tampopo,” Changkyun said. “It’s owned by a Korean family. Next door there’s a Korean place run by a Japanese family that’s even shittier, I think they make their gochujang out of ketchup and sriracha or something.”

Kihyun squinted. “That seems backwards.”

“I know, right?” Changkyun rolled his eyes. “Tomatoes weren’t introduced in Asia until the 1600’s and the Korean people have been making gochujang since at least the 1400’s.”

“What?”

“Tell me about Tampopo,” Changkyun said smoothly. He looked as though he was back in his depth. Kihyun wasn’t sure if he should be worried.

“It’s a food movie,” Kihyun said. “Mostly ramen, but not just ramen. All different types of food.”

“Food movies are all pretty weird.” Changkyun picked up his glass of beer, sipping at it with one pinky delicately extended. “Food people, really.” He eyed Kihyun over the lip of the glass. “Just how much of a foodie are you?”

The waiter returned with miso. Kihyun couldn’t have timed it better if he’d tried.

“In answer to your question,” he said, picking up the white porcelain spoon, “enough.”

When Changkyun looked at him it was with blank eyes and a stone face. “I don’t appreciate riddles. Daddy,” he added, once the waiter was gone again, expression changing finally as he arched his eyebrows.

“I’m the kind of foodie who enjoys the experience,” Kihyun said, “and sharing it.” He didn’t have to mention the flicker of imagination that had left a vivid impression of Changkyun in his head, naked, waiting, his chest and soft stomach and sloping thighs acting as a platter for as many types of food as had been in the movie. “It would be easier to explain if you’d seen Tampopo.”

“It’s eleven years older than me,” Changkyun commented, scrolling slowly down the search results on his phone.

“Is that a problem?”

One corner of Changkyun’s mouth quirked. “Sometimes I like things that are older than me,” he replied. “I guess you’ll just have to show it to me so I can decide. I’ll bring my own food movie, we can watch both of them.”

“You’ll show me yours if I should you mine?”

“I think we’re a little past that.”

Kihyun opened his mouth and said a stupid thing. “Baby boy,” he said. “Are you flirting?”

Changkyun blinked calmly but his ears went red. “Do you want me to be?”

“Clean your plate,” Kihyun replied. “Then we’ll talk.”

 

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Changkyun felt stupid. He didn't like feeling stupid, but he did, and it wasn't any more fun than he remembered.

It was cloudy but warm, humid, the kind of mid-May afternoon that reminded you in no uncertain terms that summer was coming, and almost definitely with a vengeance. Changkyun tugged at his shirt as inconspicuously as possible; he'd worn layers to school that day because trusting the weather report in May around here was like wearing flipflops behind the counter at a sashimi restaurant where the gimmick is that all the chefs are drunk, but the AC had been turned up all the way in the restaurant and he hadn't thought to adjust before stepping out into the world again. He could almost feel sweat collecting along the collar of his t-shirt (black! it was even black) and if Kihyun saw his pit sweat he would probably die. He wanted to be unapproachable because of sexiness, not because of being gross and weird.

He stepped off the curb almost before he realized it, a hand around his wrist tugging him forward. "Are you asleep or something?" Kihyun asked. "The light changed, let's go."

"I don't know where you parked," Changkyun replied, trying not to stumble as he moved to catch up with Kihyun's stride. "I was waiting for you."

"Mmhmm."

Kihyun, Changkyun was slowly discovering, was kind of a smug asshole. "You're a smug asshole," Changkyun said.

"Asshole, yes." Kihyun stepped up onto the curb upon reaching the other side of the street, letting go of Changkyun's wrist to dig in his pocket instead. There was a cheerful beep from the other side of the paid parking lot. "Still working on smug. We're over here."

They turned down an aisle of cars. Kihyun pointed. Changkyun stopped in his tracks. "Why," he said, "am I not surprised that you drive a sports car?"

Kihyun had the decency to at least turn a color found in nature. "This is clearly a sensible four-door vehicle."

"Ooh, and it's even Korean-made." Changkyun trailed a fingertip over the KIA logo on the back of the car. "What, are you too much of an important business man to drive a Veloster?"

"The Hyundai Veloster is all style and no substance," Kihyun said. It was matter-of-fact and boring and made Changkyun want to suck his Professional Business Penis right there in the parking lot, which didn't make any sense at all. "The Kia Stinger has more room, more power, and the view through the back window is better." Changkyun looked at him. "What? Safety is important."

Changkyun pulled open the back seat door, leaning in a little to inspect it thoroughly. "Leather seats? Is this for real? What kind of racket are you working to afford a car with leather seats?"

"Leather seats came with the car. Could you—"

"There's a lot of room back here," Changkyun said. "You know, like... for activities." He looked over his shoulder. "Did you say something?"

"I can't get to my door," Kihyun said. He said it with his jaw tight and his voice clipped. "Could you please move?"

"You don't have to get mad," Changkyun muttered, straightening up. "I was just looking."

"I'm not," Kihyun said quickly. "I'm not mad. You're just— in the way."

Had Jooheon been with him then Changkyun might have come out of the experience without making too big of a fool of himself. Jooheon was good at knowing when Changkyun was about to say something he probably shouldn't. Things like, "Hey," and, "Can I ride your dick in the backseat of your sensible four-door vehicle?" Alas, Jooheon was notably absent.

"Hey," Changkyun said. "Can I ride your dick in the backseat of your sensible four-door vehicle?"

For a second Kihyun looked like he was going to go a sort of fetching stucco color, but then something changed in his face - something tiny, something Changkyun wouldn't be able to pinpoint later - and instead his eyebrows went up. "Do you really think you can afford to have this car cleaned?"

Changkyun sighed as theatrically as humanly possible. “Fine,” he said. “ _May_ I ride your dick in the backseat of your sensible four-door vehicle?”

“Unless you shop at Goodwill for the aesthetic I’m pretty sure the answer is still no.” Kihyun licked his lips - not really a nervous tic, just the tip of his pink tongue flickering out to wet the corner of his mouth. “Any other bright ideas, baby boy?”

 _An independent baby boy who don’t need no Daddy,_ said Kihyun’s voice in his head.

“I could suck it,” Changkyun croaked.

Kihyun made a face. “Messy.”

“I can be clean!”

“Not in my experience,” Kihyun replied.

Changkyun hadn’t blushed in years and today he was blushing every five minutes, ears going hot, blood rushing through his cheeks. God bless his tan. “You don’t have a big enough sample size.”

“Don’t want to risk it. This is a lease.”

What did this asshole think, that Changkyun wanted him bad enough to barter for it? “Handjob,” Changkyun said.

Kihyun gave him a skeptical look. “You’re not the type to stop there.”

“I don’t have to unbutton your pants,” Changkyun said.

“What’s in it for me?”

“An _orgasm_ ,” Changkyun stuttered after a second. “That’s—”

“That’s what _you_ want,” Kihyun interrupted. He blinked slow and Changkyun hated him. “Make me an offer that’s worth it or get in the car so I can drive you home.”

He moved to step past but Changkyun pressed one palm to his chest to stop him. “A kiss,” he said, throat curiously tight. “With tongue.”

The air hummed between them for a millisecond, for an eternity, but then Kihyun smiled and leaned forward. “I don’t need to get you into the backseat for that,” he said.

Kihyun pressed him up against the car to kiss him, pinning him down against the window like a butterfly in a shadow box. Changkyun felt caught - like a fish maybe, a bird in a cage, a lap dog buckled tight into its collar - but it was cozy and comfortable and safe.

He didn’t mean to moan the word _please_ into Kihyun’s waiting mouth but he did anyway. (He would have meant it had he thought about it before saying it. He was almost annoyed that he hadn’t gotten to stress it properly.) He didn’t mean to but he did and apparently it was the magic spell to break Kihyun’s resolve, because Changkyun didn’t even have a chance to blink before he was being shoved into the car, Kihyun following close behind.

“Thought you said this was a lease,” Changkyun groaned, breath hiccuping as Kihyun dragged him over by his thighs to straddle his hips. “Aren’t you afraid I’m gonna get it all messy?”

“Sometimes baby boys make messes,” Kihyun said. He pressed his palm to Changkyun’s dick through his jeans. “Is your safeword still cinnamon?"

"Probably," Changkyun moaned against Kihyun's shoulder, tipping forward to grind against the pressure of Kihyun's hand.

Kihyun pushed him off. "No, answer me. Safeword?"

"Cinnamon, Sir," Changkyun replied, the honorific popping out of him.

Kihyun hadn't asked to be called Sir, or Daddy, or anything else really besides his name and possibly also Oh My God, Yes, Right There, but Changkyun had slipped into it on accident early on Saturday night - in the bathroom, before he'd known Kihyun's name. When Kihyun had showed up at his table Changkyun barely thought anything of it. The last person who'd fucked him was Hoseok with his thick square frame and his muscles and his fat cock, and Kihyun (at the time he'd been Mr Brave in the back of Changkyun's head) was almost exactly the opposite of that in every possible way.

But there'd been a light in Mr Brave's eye that poked something deep in Changkyun's chest, twisted in his lungs with a funny heat. When Kihyun used his soft small hands to push him roughly against the inside of the stall, laughed at him mockingly in that high soft voice whenever he tried to talk back, it didn't feel at all like the opposite of what Changkyun wanted.

Mr Brave was the one who picked him up, Kihyun was who sucked the life out of him in a gay bar bathroom, and when Changkyun opened his mouth the name that came out was _Daddy_.

Today was Thursday, not Saturday. "Good boy," Kihyun murmured, and reached for the fly of Changkyun's black skinny jeans.

He'd put them on that morning because they made his legs look good, he hadn't expected to get a boner, that wasn't on the menu for today. He'd even masturbated himself to near exhaustion the night before just to make sure he could keep his head on his shoulders, but still when Kihyun pulled down the zipper of those goddamn idiotic skinny jeans he couldn't help but moan with relief as his dick sprang free.

"Look at that," Kihyun said. He swiped his thumb over the head of Changkyun's dick, over the dark wet stain of precum on his peacock blue boxer briefs. "You said you could be clean but you're already starting to make a mess."

"It's contained," Changkyun said, but it was weak. Kihyun knew exactly how much pressure Changkyun needed, (was this just how he was naturally, or had he learned Changkyun's kinks over the course of a single one night stand? both options made Changkyun's thighs quiver of their own accord), and _contained_ wouldn't be an accurate descriptor for his mess if this kept up. "You don't know it'll be a mess."

Kihyun's hands crept around his hips to grab his ass, pull him in a little closer so that Changkyun's cock rubbed against his own through those boring gray slacks. "You gonna be good for me, baby boy?"

"Hell no," Changkyun replied, and kissed him, rocking forward to drag heavily along the smooth fabric between them.

Kihyun growled against his mouth like he was annoyed but still kissed him back, hands clenching on the meat of his ass to steer and guide him through each maddeningly distant stroke. “We’ll see. Sit back,” he added, pushing Changkyun away by his shoulders.

"Hey," Changkyun whined, struggling against him, "I'm not— _oh_ —"

He couldn't help but obey then, falling back and resting his weight on Kihyun's knees. His legs were splayed wide to bracket Kihyun's hips and he was hard, hard, hard and drippy and ready when Kihyun slipped the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs down just enough to pull out the head of Changkyun's dick. He smeared the pad of his thumb over the tip, cupping the swell of it in his soft palm and working it almost delicately - rubbing it, rolling it, pinching light just under the head to milk out thick beads of precum.

"Be good," Kihyun murmured, letting his free hand drift to Changkyun's waist.

The sun had started setting when they were still in the restaurant and now the inside of the car was dark, nearly pitch black, but Changkyun could see the shine of Kihyun's lips and the way he inclined his head in concentration and it was enough. Changkyun tipped forward, down, falling into his orbit like a comet caught in the gravity field of a small but incredibly magnetic planet, finding his mouth. His jaw. His throat—

“No biting,” Kihyun said, pinching down on Changkyun’s dick.

“Don’t try an’ tame me,” Changkyun murmured back, and nipped at him a second time.

Kihyun pushed him back and off. It wasn’t hard or violent, just firm, but it felt like being slapped in the face. “No biting,” he repeated. “Since you can’t be good, playtime is over.”

Changkyun tried to plaster a seductive smile to his face. “You don’t mean that,” he purred, reaching out to play with the lapels of Kihyun’s white cotton oxford.

Kihyun shook his head and brushed Changkyun’s hand away casually, adjusting on the backseat until he’d dumped him off his lap. “Time to head home,” he said. “I have an early meeting tomorrow. Do you know how to direct me to your place from here or do I need navigation?”

Changkyun goggled at him. He was wearing his black skinny jeans and his cutest long sleeved shirt under his cleverest goodwill t-shirt find and Kihyun had _dumped him off his lap_. “Ex _cuse_ me?” he asked.

“You can ride back here if you like.” Kihyun paused for a second with one hand on the door, sticking his fingertips in his mouth to suck off the precum. “Company’s better in the front, though.”

"I'll stay back here," Changkyun snapped, stuffing his dick irritably back into his underwear and tugging the waistband of his jeans back up his ass. "Thanks. You're so fucking kind. Gimme your phone, I'll put in my address."

Kihyun settled into the driver's seat and handed his phone back. "Suit yourself," he said.

He was calm. Cool. Serene. Changkyun had felt his dick through those pants and there was no way he wasn't hurting right now. He handed the phone back and Kihyun took it. He seemed fine. He seemed fine? How could he be fine when Changkyun was suffering like this?

They drove in silence broken only but the robotic voice of Kihyun's navigation system and the almost audible hum of Changkyun's loathsome arousal.

When they pulled up in front of Hoseok's mom's house Kihyun turned the car off, opened the door, and got out almost before Changkyun would blink, moving around to open his door for him like some kind of royal valet. Changkyun looked at him. Kihyun looked back.

"Thank you," Changkyun hazarded, allowing Kihyun to help him up out of the car.

"I'd like to see you on Saturday evening," Kihyun said, and if Changkyun didn't know any better he might have thought Kihyun stuttered over the S.

"Even though I can't behave?" Changkyun spit at him.

"You don't send a puppy back to the breeder just for peeing on the floor once," Kihyun replied. "You're poorly behaved, not hopeless." He reached out and brushed a speck of lint off the front of Changkyun's t-shirt. "I'd like to see you again."

"I guess," Changkyun said after a second of fevered thought. "Whatever. Text me or something, I'll see if I can."

"You will," Kihyun said, and got back into his car.

He waited, engine idling, to make sure that Changkyun got inside. The door wasn’t locked, the sun had set and Thursdays were rest days and Hoseok never locked the front door when he was home alone. (He’d said something once about wanting to face his fears head on, but Changkyun usually ignored him when he started waxing too lyrical and couldn’t remember the rest.)

Changkyun shut the door behind him and flipped the deadlock. Took a breath. Held it. Let it out again.

“You’re home late,” Hoseok said from the kitchen, peering around the corner. “Did you get detention or something?”

“I keep telling you, there’s no detention in grad school.” Changkyun squatted, fumbling with the laces of his chucks. “I went out for a drink with a guy.”

Hoseok materialized almost magically next to him, socks sliding on the hardwood. “You suck his dick?” he asked.

“No,” Changkyun said, and set his right sneaker down on the floor harder than he needed to, the rubber hitting the wood with a smack.

“Did he suck your dick?”

“Wrong again.” His second shoe came off. _Slap_. “You can keep guessing if you want, though.”

Hoseok looked thoughtful for a second before his expression slid slowly into disbelief, then horror, then pity. “He didn’t,” he whispered.

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Changkyun said, standing up and heading into the house back toward his bedroom.

Hoseok gasped. “No. He brushed you off?”

“No!” He grimaced, stopping in the hallway. “Maybe. Not exactly. Anyway we’re going out again on Sunday so whatever. Leave me alone, I have to study.”

“You wanna mutually masturbate about it?”

“No,” Changkyun said over his shoulder. It wasn’t until after he’d closed his bedroom door, set his backpack down on the floor, and fallen face first onto his bed that he realized that he’d been telling the truth.

Fuck. Fuck!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hyungwon and hoseok meet.

"I'm telling you," Jooheon said, "I've known Beth for years. Her business practices are predatory and unfair but she's got a heart of gold if you know her and she owes you a favor and especially if you know her girlfriend's number and can rat her out on speed dial."

"That doesn't sound like a heart of gold," Minhyuk countered, foot up on the dash of Jooheon's car as they idled in the gas station parking lot. "That sounds like the opposite of a heart of gold."

"She's got good weed," Jooheon sighed. He turned the key in the ignition. "You got the money?"

Minhyuk pressed a hand to his heart. "Do I _have the money_ ," he said. "How dare you suggest that I'm not a walking bank?"

"You work odd jobs at the YMCA and volunteer at a church nursery on Sunday mornings, that doesn't pay very much."

"That has nothing to do with my fiscal liquidity," Minhyuk said primly, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door. "Yes I got the money, now let's go find out just how gold your friend's heart is."

"Gold-ish," Jooheon replied, struggling with his own seatbelt. "Brassy. Maybe needs a good buff."

Minhyuk walked up to the glass doors of the gas station and pulled one open, gesturing Jooheon through. "Cutest first."

"Shut up," Jooheon said.

"Definitely won't do that," Minhyuk replied, slapping his ass as he walked by. "Hey, it's our good friend Chase! What's up, Chase?"

"I cleaned the hot dog rollers," Chase said quickly, grabbing onto the hem of his polyester company polo uniform shirt. "Don't worry. Spic and span."

"We're not here about the hot dogs," Jooheon said. "Where's Beth?"

Chase hooked a thumb over one shoulder, pointing to an open door in the back of the store. "Probably in the back. You need oregano?"

"Spicier than that," Jooheon replied, rapping his knuckles on the plastic counter. "Thanks for your help."

Chase relaxed. "Yeah," he said. "No prob."

Minhyuk had to jog a little to catch up with Jooheon as he strode confidently down the snack aisle, hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Is Chase just always stoned or something?" he whispered.

"He's Chase," Jooheon replied, like that explained anything whatsoever. "Hey Beth, what's up? How's Maria?"

Beth - probably Beth - glanced up from a dinged up wooden desk in the back room, peering at them over the frames of a pair of reading glasses strung on a chain around her neck. "Honey," she said, slipping the glasses from her ears. "When did you start showing up in the boonies again? I'd have expected a call."

"Friend of mine has his own hookup," Jooheon replied, sitting on the desk next to the account book she had open in front of her. "His mom has a medical permit, grows it in the backyard."

Beth blinked at him slow. "You're shitting me," she said after a second. "And you're coming by here?"

"My boyfriend lives up the road," Jooheon said, nodding in the general direction of Minhyuk's house. Bless him, he only blushed a little over the word _boyfriend_. "You've been selling him caucasus skunk, haven't you?"

"I'm not even white," Minhyuk said.

"Your _boyfriend_ ," Beth said. She looked at Minhyuk. She looked at Jooheon. She looked at Minhyuk's crotch. "How did I not know you were a size queen?"

"Don't," Jooheon hissed.

"I bet Ggyunnie said the same thing, too."

"He did," Minhyuk sighed wistfully.

Beth snorted. "What was your name again?"

"Minhyuk," Jooheon said. "Look, it's not a big deal or anything I just wanted to let you know he's with me. Hyungwon, too." The look he got was beyond unimpressed. "Tall Asian string bean. Thick accent. Mumbles."

"Oh yeah," Beth replied, scratching her hairline with the end of her pen. "The sims glitch. I remember him. I give him caucasus skunk because he's like 15 pounds soaking wet and I don't wanna go to jail for being complicit in the first cannabis overdose."

Jooheon looked at Minhyuk over his shoulder. Minhyuk shrugged. "She's got a point," he said. "It gets him to eat, though."

"Okay, fine, one gram of white girl weed," Jooheon sighed.

"Hey, if you're white how come you call it white girl weed?"

"Y'ever talked to a stoned white girl?" Beth asked, opening one of the drawers in her desk. "If you have you really shouldn't be asking me that question. One gram of white girl, what else?" She caught the look in Minhyuk's eye and sighed. "Look it's just weak, cheap, and indica heavy, okay? I've never met a white girl who didn't need a body buzz and a bag of cheetos and I just happen to sell both."

"Just impressed," Minhyuk said. "I don't remember it being cheap, though."

"I don't remember you being a white girl either," Beth countered. She combed her fingers through her curly red hair to pull it away from her face. "He's cute, Honey, but he talks too much."

"Whatever you've got for cheap. And be honest about it," Jooheon added. "My mom sees Maria at church on Sundays."

"I am _always_ honest," Beth replied, a hand over her heart. "But fine. For you, and for your sexy, sexy mom."

Minhyuk leaned in. "Right? She's like if Honey was a milf."

"You're talking about my _mother_!"

"I like him," Beth said, pulling a few plastic film canisters out of a drawer and shuffling them into a plain brown paper bag. "He's got good taste in ass."

"My mom isn't _ass_ ," Jooheon protested.

"Honeybuns," Minhyuk cooed, "some things are genetic."

Beth looked Minhyuk right in the eye. "Have you fucked his thighs?"

"Of course I've fucked his thighs. I'm not an idiot."

"I expect a humiliation discount," Jooheon sighed, looking defeated.

"I don't do charity."

"I will seriously call your girlfriend and tell her you're being mean to me. She'll rescind your tater tot privileges for a week."

Beth rolled her eyes. "Fine, five bucks off. That good enough for you?"

Minhyuk shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "Ten bucks. Honey's squishy and delicate, roasting him is like kicking a puppy."

"Six," Beth replied, mouth quirking.

"Nine."

"Seven fifty," Beth said, rapping her knuckles on the desk with a note of finality. "Final offer."

Minhyuk considered this, scritching his chin thoughtfully. "And two slushies," he said.

"One large slushie."

"Have a heart, Honey likes the rootbeer flavor and making me share that with him is cruel and unusual."

"Hey," Jooheon said, but he didn't actually have any ground to stand on so he stewed in silence.

"You're right. Two medium slushies," Beth conceded. "But you have to pay for the cups so inventory doesn't get fucked up. This is a franchise, remember?"

Jooheon picked up the paper bag and rifled through it to pull out one of the black plastic film canisters. Minhyuk and Beth continued to barter back and forth, (something about highway robbery and "I never said I'd sell you the cups at cost"), but he only kept half an ear on the conversation as he idly popped the canister caps open over and over like a nervous tic. They stood in the back room of a gas station, walls plastered with old car calendars and centerfolds out of the kind of magazine that had great articles about large women in bikinis but his head was somewhere else.

He looked up at the sound of his name. "Hm?"

Minhyuk sighed happily and reached up to pinch his cheek affectionately. "Bumblebee, you are just the cutest. Move your sweet ass, we've got slushies to get and brand new bongs to break in. Metaphorically," he added quickly, catching Beth's eye. "Don't ask."

"I'm not in the business of asking questions," Beth sniffed judgmentally. "Honey, how'd you land an accountant?" Minhyuk squawked in offended protest. "That's a personal question, not a business question," she added authoritatively. "I hope his dick-sucking lips are getting a work out. Always thought it was a shame he went straight after college. Like what a waste, right?"

"He's still learning. It's adorable."

"Can we go?" Jooheon sighed. "Are we done? Can we leave now and get so stoned I'm not embarrassed anymore, which will probably be when I die?"

"You love it," Minhyuk said, sliding his hand around Jooheon's waist to pull him close and then along with him toward the door. "It's my god given right as your boyfriend to make you suffer in public for telling me your deepest secrets."

"Oh sorry, _hyung_ ," Jooheon muttered. "I forgot."

"You want me to spank you for misbehavior right here? In public?"

Jooheon stumbled, going stiff. "Could you just give me a couple minutes to breathe between suggestive quips?"

"Shush, Honeybee, and get your heathen ice drink.” Minhyuk paused, glanced out the glass doors at the front of the gas station. “Hey, do you think Hyungwonnie’s biggest fan wants anything?"

“He only eats dry chicken breast and broccoli,” Jooheon replied. “He won’t be offended if we don’t get him a slushie.”

 

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“I cannot be _lieve_ ,” Hoseok grumbled, scrambling out of the backseat, “that you didn’t get me a slushie too. Why would you do that to me? I thought we were _friends_.”

“I haven’t seen you eat anything that wasn’t organic for like…” Jooheon hesitated.

“Exactly. I’ve been saving up for this cheat day for a _million years_ —”

“A millyun yeerzth,” Minhyuk murmured thoughtfully under his breath.

“—And I definitely deserve a slushie,” Hoseok finished. “Gimme some cash, I’ll go get my own.”

They stood in the gas station parking lot squinting in the sun, leaning against the side of Jooheon’s car and absorbing the heat the old red paint had been collecting all morning in the early heat of an overexcited spring. Minhyuk slurped at his straw. “I like him,” he said. “You used to fuck him, right?”

“I never said that,” Jooheon said, ears going hot.

“No, he did.” Minhyuk nudged him affectionately with one elbow. “You know I wondered why you were so private until I met your friends. You really can’t tell them anything, can you?”

“It was just a couple blowjobs in college," Jooheon said. "I found out his mom was my kindergarten teacher and that kinda killed the blowjob aspect of our friendship."

"Poor bastard," Minhyuk mused to himself, scooping up some blue raspberry crushed ice with the spoon on the end of his slushie straw. "Do I have him to thank for your current skill level?"

"I guess partially? Here he is. Hey Hoseok, did you buy out the store or something?"

"Hot cheetos," Hoseok replied, generic plastic grocery sacks hanging from his arms as he stepped off the curb onto the warm asphalt of the parking lot. "And the really _bad_ kind of teriyaki turkey jerky."

"You an' Wonnie are a match made in heaven," Minhyuk said, pushing off the car. "What a stereotype this is, yeah? Sunny Saturday afternoon, buncha hot cheetos and turkey jerky and weed and a variety of queers. What could be better than this?"

"I don't think I've heard of this stereotype," Jooheon mused, pulling open his door. Warm air puffed up out of the car almost like he'd opened a preheating oven. "Three gay guys walk into a bar, the first one orders weed, the second one orders a slushie, the third one orders hot cheetos…?"

Hoseok had the first bag of cheetos open by the time Jooheon had his seatbelt buckled. "I can't believe," he said, as Jooheon pulled back out onto the mostly empty highway, "that you just _happen_ to know one of the hottest local up and coming DJs. How did you pull that off?"

"Well, I mean..." Minhyuk took a long, pensive suck. "It probably helped that we were in the same class all through school. Do you like his stage name?"

"It's all right," Hoseok said. "Is he—"

"I helped come up with it," Minhyuk said. “Just so you know.”

"... It's great," Hoseok said.

"Thank you," Minhyuk said.

"Do you think he knows who I am too?" Jooheon glanced in the rearview mirror to see Hoseok practically vibrating with excitement. "I mean I haven't really gone out much in the last couple years, but it's not like everybody forgot about me. Did he recognize my name when you mentioned it?"

"He said Hoseok didn't sound familiar," Jooheon replied, pumping the brake a little and flipping the turn signal to turn into Minhyuk's long gravel driveway. "I couldn't remember your fake name though."

"Wonho," Hoseok whined. "Come on, man. Wonho."

Minhyuk snapped his head around. "What?"

"Everybody out," Jooheon said, pulling the parking brake and turning off the ignition. “Mind the other car, Hoseok, it’s Kihyun’s baby.”

Minhyuk met him at his door as he was getting out, leaning in close. "Did he say his club name was Wonho?"

"Yeah," Jooheon whispered back. "Why, have you heard of him?"

Minhyuk looked, for lack of a better phrase, absolutely and horrifically pleased. "Oh, honey," he said. "You have no idea."

 

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Hyungwon sat back against the pillows mounded at the head of his bed and held his breath for a little while, a joint in his hand and smoke in his lungs. His bedroom had been a teenaged Minhyuk’s bedroom ten years ago and the walls were still dark wine red from when he’d gone through his Moulin Rouge phase. He kept saying he was going to paint it over into some other more reasonable color that didn’t make him feel like he’d regressed all the way back into the womb, but through a combination of laziness and an odd sort of coziness he’d never gotten around to it. Instead he’d tried out covering the walls with posters to break up the blank rectangles of sensual, satin-finish monochrome and in some places it worked, but he’d put a few in a place he could see easily from his bed and he was beginning to suspect it had been a mistake.

When he lay back against his headboard, stoned or otherwise, he was faced with a collection of promotional posters for events he’d attended back when he’d still been getting his feet under him. (Minhyuk had been no help. “Oh, nightclubs? Yeah, we have those I think.”) He’d known since he was too young to know exactly what it meant that he’d wanted to get into music but before he’d visited Minhyuk in the states the first time and tried out the culture he hadn’t realized exactly how much.

Gravel crunched under tires outside his window. He made eye contact with the dancer inhabiting a central position on the wall facing his bed, the one who made all those posters such a big damn mistake. “And fuck you especially,” he said, and crushed out the cherry of his joint in a banchan dish that he’d taken from his mom’s cabinet in a spurt of misplaced teenaged rebellion.

He was almost to the stairs down to the front door when the doorbell rang - and rang, and rang, like somebody was pressing it way too hard and way too fast - and Minhyuk started yelling, “Hey, open up, I left my keys on my nightstand yesterday! Hyungwon! I know you’re in there!”

“Hold on,” Hyungwon called, shuffled down the stairs in his house slippers. A vague memory of Minhyuk saying something about one of Jooheon’s friends coming along flickered in the back of his head but the memory that he didn’t care flickered even louder. He compromised with himself by pulling up his pajama bottoms and tightening the drawstring around his hips before unlocking and opening the door. “What nonsense have you brought me today?”

Minhyuk smiled at him and waved, keys in his dishonest, lying hand. “Wonho,” he said, and stepped aside.

The dancer inhabiting a central position on the wall facing Hyungwon’s bed stepped up onto the porch from the last step up and reached forward to shake Hyungwon’s hand excitedly. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I finally get to meet you,” said Hyungwon’s biggest wet dream. “H.one, right? Holy shit, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get in contact with you for ages! It’s a crime that you haven’t gotten any weekend night gigs, I picked up your mixtape a couple weeks ago from a friend of mine— more a rival, really, but that’s beside the point—”

“He’s Honey’s friend,” Minhyuk interrupted, pushing past both of them. “You know, he mentioned. Hoseok, remember?”

“Hoseok,” Hyungwon echoed back. Hoseok, or Wonho, or whoever, was still holding his hand and he was too stoned for this. “Wonho. You’re— you’ve heard of me?”

“You’re so much cuter under the mask than I expected,” Hoseok gushed. “I mean you still look really cool, but your baby face is adorable.”

Hyungwon looked down at himself. He was wearing blue and white striped pajamas and frog socks and house slippers and he smelled like weed. (What had Jooheon called it? White girl weed? Mostly what he knew about white girls had to do with Lana del Rey and the found family he’d curated of other pumpkin spice latte enthusiasts.) “Cool,” he replied. “Yep. That’s me.”

“Okay now go _through_ the door,” Jooheon said testily, pushing Hoseok in to get past him. “If you can’t carry in your own cheetos the least you can do is not cause a bottleneck.”

Minhyuk was in the kitchen already, banging around as he opened cabinets apparently at random. “Where’s Kihyunnie?” he yelled.

“He said he had a headache so he was gonna lie down,” Hyungwon called back through the house.

“Wow,” Hoseok breathed, stars in his eyes. “You’re bilingual.”

Hyungwon couldn’t think of how to say _Please let go of my hand_ in English words just then, though that may have been because he didn’t try very hard. Instead he let Hoseok warm his cold fingers between his palms and said, “I guess. My Korean is better than my English.”

“That’s okay,” Hoseok said, smiling. He looked exactly like he did on all of Hyungwon’s posters except very real and very close and very loud in all kinds of ways, his skin warm and his hair caught in the wind. “My English is better than my Korean. We can meet in the middle.”

“Oh,” Hyungwon said. Then he said, “Well.”

“When you’re done having your meetcute we’ll be downstairs,” Minhyuk said, poking his head out of the kitchen with a big plastic tub of cheese puffs tucked under one arm and a very large piece of novelty glasswork crafted by local artisans tucked under the other. “But hurry up because we’re gonna smoke literally _all_ of this weed and you’re gonna miss out.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” asked Hoseok quickly, finally dropping Hyungwon’s hand and stepping past him into the living room. (Had Hyungwon been stoned he might have stood there stunned for a little bit staring at his hand like it had grown a mouth and complimented his mother; unfortunately he was stoned, so that’s what he did.)

“Wonnie can show you,” Minhyuk sang, turning on one socked heel to head back toward the basement stairs through the kitchen.

“Wonnie?” Hoseok turned back again, and pointed at him. “You’re Wonnie?”

“I guess,” Hyungwon said, and strode past him as coolly as he could while simultaneously wanting to get fucked and die. “It’s right by the stairs, come on.”

Hoseok gasped out a tiny, delighted _oh my god!_ and brought both hands up to cover his mouth. “Wonnie,” he sighed, following along after him. “That’s so cute. You’re so cute. Has anyone ever told you how cute you are?”

“Just now,” Hyungwon replied. “Several times.” Jooheon was still in the kitchen, pulling a six pack of coke out of the fridge. “Did you know about this?”

“Know about what?” Jooheon said, looking almost hunted.

“Know about what?” Hoseok said, looking almost predatory.

“Nothing,” Hyungwon said to Jooheon. “Nothing,” he said to Hoseok. “I’m going downstairs. Bring sprite.”

He pushed through the door leading to the basement stairs, Jooheon saying, “He likes sprite,” behind him as he thumped down the steps. Smoke was already starting to waft drunkenly up the staircase.

“What the fuck,” Hyungwon said, bending down to glare at Minhyuk as he descended. “What the… did you seriously just do this to me? With no warning? How long have you been planning this? Why did you do this?”

“I’ve been planning it since about 20 seconds before I rang the doorbell,” Minhyuk replied, shoving a handful of cheese puffs into his mouth and chewing with his mouth open. “I didn’t know until he said his name, dude. All of your smooth buff bara boys look the same to me. You seen one six pack you seen them all. Cheese puff?”

Hyungwon sighed, shuffling out of his house slippers to crawl up onto the couch next to Minhyuk. “Scoot over,” he said. “Gimme that. Where’s the lighter?”

“America’s made you rude,” Minhyuk replied, shifting over anyway. He dug in his pocket for a second before pulling out a lighter and tossing it underhand into Hyungwon’s waiting hand. “Your mom’s gonna kill me.”

“Maybe after she’s done with me,” Hyungwon said, picking up the bong delicately. If he broke another one he’d have to pay to replace it, and he was saving up his money for a new loop pedal. “At least I haven’t kissed any boys over here this time.”

“Yet. Your dream boy’s upstairs still.”

Hyungwon glared at Minhyuk but all he got was an eyebrow wiggle and a smile full of neon orange cheese powder before the door banged open again and Jooheon and Hoseok came down the stairs. “Speak of the devil,” Minhyuk called out, shoving Hyungwon roughly on the shoulder. “Move to the other couch, Honey’s gonna sit here. Hey— Hoseok, right? Sit by Wonnie, you two would get along great.” He pointed at both of them, one after the other. “You’re welcome,” he added pointedly.

“Ha ha,” Hyungwon said darkly, settling into the second couch Minhyuk had set up in his basement.

Hoseok sat down next to him, dust puffing up out of the cushions as he landed. “That’s so wacky that you just happen to know Honey’s boyfriend,” he said excitedly, pulling his legs to cross them under him and leaning back sideways against the arm of the couch. “I heard you were Korean but your accent—”

“He grew up there,” Minhyuk said, feeding Jooheon cheese puffs one by one like he was a baby bird. “I taught him almost all the English he knows.”

“Bullshit,” Hyungwon said.

“Like that one, for example. You don’t learn that in English-immersion cram school, I can tell you that much.” Minhyuk winked at him. “Wonnie-yah, you should teach him some Korean. A little jaji*, a little gugang seonggyo**...”

Hyungwon opened his mouth to say something - anything - but Hoseok beat him to the punch, tipping forward and brushing his bangs out of his eyes. “I know a little,” he said. “You know, baby Korean for talking to grandmas and stuff. Less than Honey, though.”

“Less than Honey,” Hyungwon echoed back, and sighed. _Less than Honey_ meant nonexistent. “Do you know annyeong haseyo?”

Hoseok lit up. “Your voice is so _cute_ ,” he said in perfect, lisping Korean, switching back to English to add, “I didn’t expect you to be so cute.”

“Yeah,” Hyungwon mumbled. “You said.” He reached for the bong with barely trembling hands. “I think I need another couple hits.”

Minhyuk laughed, pulling Jooheon in close to steal the tightly-rolled joint from between his lips. “Only loosen up as much as you want to,” he said in Korean, taking a long slow hit before handing it back. “I’m not your babysitter, man.”

“Since when am I the one that needs babysitting?” Hyungwon didn’t look Minhyuk in the eye. “You lost your speaking privileges. I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”

Minhyuk gasped, horrified, and slapped a hand to his chest. “I don’t _lie_ ,” he hissed.

“You’re lying right now,” Hoseok said in Korean, reaching out to take the bong from Hyungwon’s hands.

“No more Korean,” Jooheon complained, voice already slurring dangerously. “I get too confused. Sounds like my grandma’s at chuseok.”

“You know more than Honey,” Hyungwon commented quietly to Hoseok in Korean.

“Kam sam knee dah,” he leered in an exaggerated American accent. “I guess all that 3am Overwatch is paying off. Can I record you saying that so I can play it for my mom?”

Hyungwon was almost surprised to find himself laughing because he hadn’t expected to laugh, or breathe, or even necessarily think. Hoseok - Wonho, really - hadn’t been the only reason he’d moved to the states to live at Minhyuk’s house and dj at small nightclubs in a medium-sized city on weeknights when hardly anybody showed up, but he hadn’t exactly been on the con side of the list when Hyungwon had been weighing his options.

When Minhyuk’s parents broke up he started spending summer break in the US with his mom, and it got lonely— which, curiously, quickly became way more annoying than Minhyuk had ever managed to be, despite all expectations to the contrary. When he could he got a part time job, saved up his money and got a plane ticket. When he left he took a midnight flight from Incheon and was nearly to Los Angeles before his parents even knew he was gone.

Minhyuk was and had always been cooler than him, friendlier and louder and bigger in all the ways that were good and none of the ways that were awkward and gangly and quiet, and he knew people who knew people and they ended up in nightclubs with even cooler people who knew even cooler people and at one point he’d been 18 and drunk in the middle of a dancefloor and Wonho had been there and maybe… maybe he’d always known he wanted to do something, be someone, and 18 years old, drunk, gay, out for the first time in his entire life in the middle of an American nightclub he was too young to get into, and— and Wonho was there—

“What?” Hyungwon stuttered.

“I asked if you were okay,” Hoseok said, gently taking the pipe from Hyungwon’s loose fingertips and setting it on the coffee table. “You were kinda zoning out.”

“Stoned,” Hyungwon said. And Wonho was there, so then he said, “Y’wanna kiss?”

He’d caught hell when he got back, stepping off the plane directly into one of his mother’s famous tearstained slaps, but even afterward under veritable house arrest he didn’t regret it. He’d enlisted right out of high school and then when he got out he got a job, saved up his money, and this time when he bought a ticket he only got it going one way.

Maybe it had just been Minhyuk’s cool mom or the nightclubs where he’d seen boys kissing each other without being scared but being here felt good. It felt good to ask a boy if he wanted to kiss and know that at least he wouldn’t get a black eye, but it felt even better when Hoseok laughed at him again, giggling like a kid opening a long-anticipated present on Christmas morning, and came in close to kiss him quick and sweet and delighted.

“I was expecting to be the one to ask,” he said, laugh going breathless as he slid one hand behind Hyungwon’s neck and pulled him in closer and kissed him deeper.

 

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"So," Jooheon had said casually yesterday afternoon, as though he weren't about to forever alter the course of Hoseok's life, "have you ever heard of a DJ called H.one?"

Hoseok's grip slipped on his work badge, lanyard snapping it back directly into his left nut. "Yes," he replied, eventually, once he got sight back in at least one eye. He gingerly trying clocking out one more time, holding the badge in one tight fist and using the other to shield the third and fourth most important parts of his body. (The most important was his face, which belonged to the world, and then his heart, which belonged to his mother.) "How have you?"

"He's Minhyuk's roommate," Jooheon said, holding the door open for Hoseok to wobble through with a funny bow-legged stride. "I said I'd ask if you'd heard of him." Jooheon stopped as he walked, pausing at the curb right before he stepped off the pavement and onto the asphalt parking lot. "You okay? Need me to carry you or something?"

"He's _what_ ," Hoseok hissed, pain forgotten. "He's what? H.one is just— he's just _your boyfriend's roommate_? How?"

"I think they grew up together," Jooheon said, wearing his default expression of confusion and vague alarm. "I mean— they probably talked about it before he, like, moved in—"

"You don't understand." Hoseok caught up to Jooheon and gently took his hand. "He's very hot and I've only gotten see him live once because he always gets passed over for the good slots so it's always like Wednesday night or whatever, you know, and I'm all responsible and shit now, right? But he's so... he's so hot, Honey."

"... Anyway," Jooheon said, glancing over his shoulder at the security camera over the door, "I'm going over there tomorrow afternoon and I've been encouraged to invite you. He'll be there, so—"

"I will also be there," Hoseok said. "What are we gonna—"

"I'll text you," Jooheon had interrupted, patting him on the arm.

He'd tried not to stress out about it but it hadn't worked and he'd gotten himself all nervous but when Minhyuk knocked on his own door and Hyungwon opened it (Hyungwon, not H.one) everything was perfect and nothing was awkward and he was pretty sure he wanted to kiss Hyungwon until one or both of them passed out.

Hoseok had wondered what Hyungwon's mouth tasted like. On closer inspection it mostly tasted like sprite and weed and mouth, which was perfect.

Hyungwon was even cuter when he was being kissed, sleepy eyes fluttering shut with the pressure. His long thin hand slipped onto Hoseok's thigh, fingertips digging in just a little as though to ground himself, and when Hoseok pressed he parted his lips easily to let him in. He'd asked. He'd asked to be kissed and Hoseok kept wanting to pinch himself but at least he had Hyungwon's almost-nothing weight on his leg pinning him down to reality.

From the other side of the universe (or the room, whichever) Minhyuk's voice came floating on thick waves of singed cannabis, saying something snide in Korean that included the words _mom_ and _man_ and _kiss_. Hyungwon extended an arm, a fist, and a middle finger in that order. Minhyuk cackled, but Hoseok had more important things to do than pay attention.

The smoke had gotten heavy enough that maintaining a background hum was easy enough that they mostly didn't have to stop to take hits. Hoseok pulled Hyungwon into his lap and it was easy; he settled them both against the place where the back of the couch met the arm and it was easy; he kissed Hyungwon and it was so, so easy. It was all easy, like falling down a hole.

Even if he wasn't stoned Hoseok was pretty sure he could just sit there on some ratty loveseat in a stranger's basement kissing Hyungwon like this forever, but he was stoned and Hyungwon tasted better than anything he'd ever tasted before and so he had infinite time for this. Hyungwon kissed him and it was enough. Minhyuk put on music and each song seemed to take forever, except for sometimes when he blinked and he’d been so caught up in the sound Hyungwon made when he bit his lip that six songs had passed without him even noticing.

Hyungwon was on top of him, straddling his hips with those long thin legs that looked so intimidating behind a turntable and so satisfying to grab in real life, and the sun was low enough to creep through the high basement windows, and Hoseok slipped his hands under Hyungwon’s button-up pajama top, and Hyungwon made a funny noise halfway between an annoyed sigh and a petulant whine and a hesitant, wanting moan, and then—

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk was saying on the other side of the room. “Do you know what that means?”

“No,” Jooheon replied in a hushed voice, “but I think it’s… Yiddish…?”

“How do you know what Yiddish sounds like?”

“Changkyun lived in Israel when he was a kid. He taught me some swear words.”

“What a good friend,” Minhyuk sighed affectionately, then turned. “Yah, Hyungwon!”

Hyungwon pulled away from Hoseok’s lips with a sigh. “What,” he said.

“You said that Kihyun went to go lay down because he had a headache. Did he say where?”

“No,” Hyungwon mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face. “I dunno. Why?”

“Because he’s here,” Minhyuk said, pulling a blanket back off of a futon on the other side of the not-quite finished basement. “And he’s stoned out of his mind and he’s speaking what Honey thinks might be Yiddish and he’s very angry about, uh... something.”

“Goyim,” Hyungwon offered sleepily. “He said goyim. I know that one.”

“What does it mean?”

“I mean I don’t know _that_ much about it.”

“Changkyun lived in Israel?” asked Hoseok. He felt like he was several steps behind. “Wait, don’t Changkyun and Kihyun have a date in like…” He glanced at the clock. “I guess like an hour?”

“But it’s _shabbat_ ,” Minhyuk protested.

“Not after sunset,” Hyungwon sighed. “God damn it. You hotboxed him.”

“ _We_ hotboxed him,” Minhyuk corrected.

Hyungwon sat up irritably, pushing off of Hoseok’s chest. “I haven’t touched the weed in like half an hour and the smoke in here is so thick you could cut it with a knife, so whose fault is it really?”

“It’s necessary,” Jooheon slurred, flopping back down on the couch.

Somewhere in the back of Hoseok’s head a voice told him that he shouldn’t ask, but that just made him want to even more. “Necessary for what?”

“I have to relax,” Jooheon said, closing his eyes. “So Minnie can fuck me hard enough to rearrange my ins—”

“Okay!” Minhyuk interrupted, looking bright and shiny and very, very brittle. “Well, looks like we should send Changkyun a text or something, let him know there’s a raincheck…”

Behind him Kihyun moaned and sat up, hair sticking up in every direction. He blinked slow, one eye and then the other, before looking up and blearily staring around the room. “Oy vey ist mir,” he mumbled, letting his face fall into his hands. “Shanda fur die goyim.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * jaji = dick  
> ** gugang seonggyo = oral sex
> 
> stay in school, kids


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little bit of a time skip back to last tuesday because i forgot to explain a few things and also i wanted to write about jooheon and minhyuk kissing at a park after sunset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the mowgli's song you should listen to is called whatever forever.

**Tuesday**

Minhyuk sat across the table from his boyfriend at a little restaurant in the northeast quarter and drank his tequila sunrise and ate his fried calamari and listened, absolutely and sincerely rapt, as Jooheon told him every boring, mundane detail about his workday. Minhyuk had always been good at paying attention but rarely had done so for his own enjoyment, but he hung on Jooheon’s every word, watched him talk and think and sigh, and everything about it was perfect.

"You've got something," Minhyuk interrupted, picking up his napkin and leaning over the table to blot at a smear of sauce on Jooheon's bottom lip. (He said it in Korean; he'd started slipping into it whenever he said something Jooheon might find embarrassing, keeping his vocabulary simple and his grammar even simpler so that Jooheon would be sure to understand.)

Last month Jooheon probably would have jerked backward away from him, (Minhyuk had found it endearing at the time, but now found he didn't miss it), and today he just tipped his chin up obediently. "Do it romantically," he said, the Korean adorably choppy and American in his mouth.

"Oh?"

"No, I mean— sit down," Jooheon hissed at him, pushing him back down into his seat via one palm planted firmly on his face. "I didn't say kiss it off my mouth."

"But that's the height of romance," Minhyuk argued, reasonably, and licked Jooheon’s palm. "Haven't you ever watched Secret Garden?"

Jooheon snapped his hand back, wiping it on his napkin with a disgusted, distracted look on his face. “What, like the book where the girl has to move in with her uncle—?"

"Oh, god. I've got my work cut out for me," Minhyuk sighed, pressing a hand to his chest in mock horror. "Don't worry, I'll educate you properly. Hyungwonnie will help deflower you, he loves drama virgins."

"When you say it that way it makes me nervous," Jooheon said.

"What way? It's true!"

"Maybe it's the word 'deflower,'" Jooheon pointed out, ducking his head a little. Pink flushed his cheeks. A doll. A sweetheart. A piglet. Minhyuk just wanted to feed him cake until he tasted as sweet as he looked. "When I think about your friends I don't want my immediate thought to be about having sex with them."

"Mm." Minhyuk thoughtfully popped a piece of calamari in his mouth. "Of course not, having sex with you is my job."

Jooheon made the cutest choking sound Minhyuk had ever heard in his life, narrowly edging out the last choking sound Minhyuk had heard him make. Minhyuk valued novelty, which was ideal— with every passing moment Jooheon got better and better, defying all reason. "Oh," he said. "God, I just— I just remembered we're in public."

Minhyuk coughed out a laugh, covering his mouth with one hand. "We're obviously on a date," he said, croaking around the calamari stuck in his throat. "People who go on dates also sometimes have sex with each other."

"I _know_ , but—" Jooheon cut himself off, biting his lips together pensively and looking down at his glass of wine. "You know how when you see a gay couple and you, like, _immediately_ think about them having sex?"

Adorable. Adorable, but sometimes... god, sometimes Jooheon was so, so dumb. "That's called being gay, sweetheart," Minhyuk said gently, reaching forward to pat Jooheon comfortingly on the hand.

Jooheon glowered at him but moved his hand to thread their fingers together. "No, I mean like a morbid fascination. Not _morbid_ ," he added quickly, jolting forward and going pale as he registered what he'd just said, "I don't mean morbid, I mean— like— like it’s my fascination that’s morbid, not the, you know. The thing." He looked horrified. "I don't know."

"It's okay." Minhyuk squeezed his hand. "You're in heteronormative recovery. A lot of people go through this."

"I just mean that it feels weird," Jooheon blurted out. "Knowing that people are thinking about us having sex."

"I dunno, I like being surrounded by like-minded people. It's validating." Jooheon fell into a sulk, bottom lip out and shoulders slumped. Minhyuk, weak, soft Minhyuk, broke immediately. "Don't be so anxious," he said, reaching out to flick Jooheon's lip gently with one finger. "People do what they do. Why stop yourself from living?"

Jooheon's blood was doing so much work Minhyuk was almost concerned for his cardiac health, rushing out and then back into his cheeks, turning the tips of his ears red, turning his fingers cold. It was subtle but Minhyuk noticed it. He watched himself notice it, and decided not to reach out to see if Jooheon's ears were as burning hot as they looked.

"Dunno," Jooheon said. "It's hard."

"Mm," Minhyuk cooed. "That's not the only thing that's hard."

"Really? That's what you have to say?"

"Definitely," Minhyuk said. He looked at Jooheon's mouth for one second, two seconds, three, before looking back up into his eyes. "We're in public, though."

Jooheon looked at him. “Right now,” he said.

Minhyuk thrust his hand in the air, not taking his eyes from Jooheon's face. "Can we have the check, please?" he called out into the slow murmur of a restaurant on a quiet Tuesday evening.

Jooheon slipped out of his chair. "I'll go get the car," he said, voice tight.

It was always hard to see Jooheon go, but such an absolute pleasure to watch him leave. "Twenty percent tip," Minhyuk said, pressing his credit card into the waiter's empty hands once she walked up to the table.

The waiter held it back out to him, rolling her eyes. "We go through this every time, Mr Lee. You and your friends—"

"Don't pay to eat, I know," Minhyuk interrupted, trying so, so hard not to be irritated at this wonderful member of the noble food service profession, "but nobody's ever said anything about paying for tips.” He pushed the card gently back toward her. “Total up the cost and run twenty percent as a tip. I'll bring cash next time."

She hesitated. “Mr Lee…”

“It’ll be our secret, okay?” He winked at her. “If you don’t tell her I won’t.”

She blushed— and, curiously, Minhyuk felt nothing. Instead he saw Jooheon’s car pull up to the curb outside and felt everything.

“Not to be rude,” he added, “but I really need to get going. Could we make this quick? Just round up.”

 

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"Yeogi yeogi," Minhyuk said, patting Jooheon urgently on the shoulder with one hand and pointing at a turn up ahead with the other. "Go in there."

"That's a public park," Jooheon said, but turned anyway. "Can't we just go to my place and make out on the couch?"

"Can't we just go to Disneyland and only go on the Dumbo ride?" Minhyuk said, pointing at a spot in the completely empty parking lot. "I didn't grow up in the US, I never got to make out with my boyfriend on a playground. That's an important experience."

"There's old gum," Jooheon replied, pulling the parking brake and turning off the engine. "And dog shit. And kids, like, vomit here."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"At the bottom of a bottle of hand sanitizer, in this case. Wait, hold on—"

"At least let me try out the swings," Minhyuk called back over his shoulder as he stepped out of the car. "Come on, it's warm for once."

Jooheon sighed.

He doubted that Minhyuk would stop at the swings but he didn’t actually mind. He loved this, going out after work on Tuesday evening to eat calamari at some prissy wine bar where Minhyuk knew the bartender, stopping at a park after sunset, smelling the fresh dew on the grass and hearing the shriek of metal on metal as Minhyuk ran whooping to the swings to hang on the chains. “Hurry up,” he yelled, rough voice sweet and echoing between the tall trees of the empty park. “Come push me!”

It felt like being seventeen, (something he’d thought more than once, spending time with Minhyuk), with nowhere to go and nowhere to be, going to a playground after dark and playing on the swings with the person he liked. The air was chilly on his skin, the hairs on his arms pricking up as the wind blew past him the higher he swung, but it was the right kind of chilly, the kind of chilly that reminds you you’re alive, and Minhyuk laughed and called him a beautiful idiot when he tripped over his shoelace heading over to the main play structure after falling off the swings for the last time.

“We’re still in public,” Jooheon said, keeping his voice quiet as Minhyuk climbed up the play structure to settle between his knees. It was one of those depressing new structures where the horizontal panels were rubber coated metal mesh and there were no metal slides to get hot in the sun, but it had a tower and that was the important thing. He leaned back against a plastic tic-tac-to board, the pieces rolling a little under his weight as he settled. “Nothing’s changed.”

“No lights,” Minhyuk murmured, nuzzling at Jooheon’s collar bone through his t-shirt. “No waiters. Fuck, you smell so _good_ baby, I could fuckin’ eat you.” He laughed against the cotton when Jooheon grunted in protest. “Not here, don’t worry.”

“Not here, he says.” Jooheon hiccuped, hands coming up involuntarily to hold tight to Minhyuk’s shoulders. “No marks, hyung.”

“No marks,” Minhyuk echoed back, breathless, harsh against Jooheon’s neck. “I promise,” he said in slurred Korean.

Jooheon had learned fast that _hyung_ was a magic word, one that needed to be used carefully and sparingly. Calling Minhyuk hyung in the middle of a play fight would shut him up for a full minute at which point he’d start talking about something else in a high distracted voice, and calling him hyung while kissing him—

Cold hands on his waist, Minhyuk slipping his fingertips under the hem of Jooheon’s shirt to slide smooth and slow up his ribcage. “We’re _still_ in _public_ ,” Jooheon said again, dick betraying him. He could push Minhyuk off if he wanted, he had the leverage and Minhyuk left slack between them, but he was seventeen again - except this time he was actually doing what he wished he could do at seventeen, secretly and under his breath - and he didn't want to push him off at all.

"Tell me to stop," Minhyuk said, mouths so close that their chapped lips brushed together as he spoke, and Jooheon wished he hadn't because he couldn’t make himself lie.

"No," Jooheon murmured. His hand tightened in Minhyuk’s bleach-rough hair of its own accord. "Don't stop."

Minhyuk groaned, breath hot against Jooheon's throat, rocking his hips forward to push Jooheon's thighs even farther apart. "What about being in public?"

"No lights," Jooheon whispered, curving down to cup Minhyuk's face in his hands and kiss him sweet and chaste at the purse of his mouth. "No waiters. Wanna make out at the park like a couple idiot teenagers?"

Minhyuk laughed against his mouth and nodded as wildly as he could without pulling away. "God. More than anything."

Jooheon laughed back, like an idiot, and said, "Anything?" into Minhyuk's mouth.

He’d been expecting the sort of quip that Minhyuk normally came up with— maybe a coy “you’re right, I could really go for some pancakes right about now” to tease him— but instead Minhyuk pulled away, caught in a funny moment of frozen thought.

The streetlights cast a green-amber glow over the parking lot, over the grass, angles and shadows on Minhyuk's face that Jooheon wanted to trace and keep. “No,” Minhyuk said after a few seconds, but it didn’t sound like a quip.

“No?”

The spell broke when Minhyuk grinned, that grin where he did his best to show every single one of his teeth and his eyes curved so high and tight that his eyelashes threaded together. “Don’t worry, baby. It’s good enough for now,” he said then, and kissed Jooheon hard enough and deep enough and good enough ( _good enough_ ) that he all but forgot about what Minhyuk had said.

 

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The funniest thing, in Minhyuk's personal opinion, was that he hadn't been looking to fall in love at all.

He'd been in love before and it hadn't been particularly fun either time— something about wanting to kiss boys didn't mesh well with the Neo-Confucian Lite™ culture at his all boys high school so his options were: 1) pine silently from a distance (a problem for him, as he found it difficult to do anything silently), or 2) get beat up every single day. In the end he'd gone for option 3, which went somewhere along the lines of Tell The Truth And Laugh.

The first time he'd confessed to a boy the force of the adrenaline rush made his knees shake, (maybe it was the fear, maybe the exhilaration), and then he'd winked and laughed and turned it into a joke, and then the boy he was in love with laughed too. It was funny, ludicrous to the point of humor, and Minhyuk took advantage of it. He couldn't say nothing but then again nothing he said mattered, so really it all came out in the wash.

The boy he loved started dating a girl from their sister school and it was fine. Why wouldn't it be? His love was a joke.

They were lying on Jooheon's couch (too soft, a hand-me-down from some grandma or another) with Jooheon splayed between his legs and pillowing his head on his stomach. "This guy's a dick," Jooheon mumbled sleepily.

Minhyuk laughed and combed his fingers through Jooheon's hair, pulling his bangs out of his face and tracing the sharp curve of his hairline. "And his sequined track suits suck too, I know baby. The female lead is worth it." Looking down at his face like this his cheeks puffed out and lips pursed in the funny natural kiss his mouth fell into when he was thinking, the only sign he was awake the flicker of his dark eyelashes against the pale of his cheeks as his eyes tracked the movement on the screen. " _And_ there's a gay character who doesn't die."

"Where's the garden? Why is it a secret?"

"It's still the first episode, stop asking so many questions."

Jooheon heaved a huge, beleaguered sigh. "I just have so _many_ ," he said.

"I know, baby," Minhyuk crooned. Jooheon's hair was long, or at least long enough to play with. At some point in the last year he'd dyed it a dark rich brown but his roots had grown out black, and if were Minhyuk were honest with himself he'd have to admit that if he weren't in love he wouldn't pay such close attention. Luckily Minhyuk was always honest with himself, so he happily took the opportunity to bask in it. "But some questions are stupid. Ow, those are my _ribs_ , I _need_ those—"

"Be nice to me," Jooheon said, tired face crumpled up into an irritable, pouting grimace. Minhyuk sighed because he couldn't not, sitting up a little and pulling Jooheon's loose, sleepy body just a little bit closer onto his lap, shifting until Jooheon's forehead lay perfectly along the curve of Minhyuk's throat. "Sorry," he said, wiggling as Jooheon's weight settled on him and they sank just that much farther into the couch. "You're right. No stupid questions. Ask whatever you want." Jooheon stiffened a little, just barely enough for Minhyuk to notice. “Whatever I want?”

“Whatever you want.”

"... When do you think we can try again?"

"Try what again?"

Jooheon pushed up on his elbows but didn’t look Minhyuk in the eye, instead opting for closely examining his left earlobe in a fit of what Minhyuk had come to recognize as Residual Presbyterian Evasion. Technically it was an offensive maneuver but he spent so much time and energy on full-body apologies that you almost didn’t notice. "You know," he said. "Me. The thing."

"Tell you what," Minhyuk said. "We can try it again when you can say the actual words without blushing."

"Without—?” Jooheon goggled at him. “If you don't want to fuck me, just say so."

"Fuck you? Is that what you think I want from you?"

Jooheon— his sweet awkward Jooheon with a good driving record and a sense of humor centered primarily around sound effects— cocked his head to the side and blinked in exaggerated coquettishness. "Gosh, hyung," he said, through soft pouting rosebud lips. "What _do_ you want from me?"

Minhyuk opened his mouth. He wanted to do a lot of things with Jooheon, the first of which being Wake Up Next To and the last being Go To Sleep Beside, but he couldn't very well say that. He wanted mornings and afternoons and evenings. He wanted to hold hands, and go shoe shopping, and pick blackberries, and wake up early on Christmas, and buy birthday presents for their kids— But he couldn’t very well say that. "Whatever you'll give me," is what Minhyuk said instead.

Jooheon made a face and lay down again. "That's rude. It's like getting a homework assignment that's like 'write three pages of anything you want.' How am I supposed to narrow it down?" He seemed to think about this for a second. "Wait, the pop star is his cousin?"

"The pop star is his cousin," Minhyuk said. His pulse quieted in his ears. "Make sure to remember that for later, it's important in a joke." He tweaked Jooheon’s ear. “Is that it? You’re not gonna try asking again? What do you mean, fuck you?”

“Hold on a second,” Jooheon replied. “I’m trying to figure out how to say it.”

“I’ll wait,” Minhyuk said, patting Jooheon gently on the face with a little _pap pap_ noise.

“I want to have sex with you,” Jooheon said finally.

“Okay. Well… check that off the list. What do you think oral sex is, exactly? The word ‘sex’ isn’t there just for fun.”

“No— I mean, yes, but—”

“I know,” Minhyuk cooed, carding his hand comfortingly through Jooheon’s hair. “I’m teasing. You wanna try bottoming again? Is that the kind of sex you mean?”

“... Yeah.” Jooheon buried his head in Minhyuk’s chest, grabbing loose fistfuls of his t-shirt to cover his face more effectively. “That.”

“Use your words, baby. I wanna hear you say it.”

Jooheon groaned. “I want to try bottoming again.”

“Okay, now was that so hard?”

“I don’t know, it— it’s a thing, you know?” Jooheon let go of his t-shirt, sighing as he slumped over again. “I dunno, I can suck dicks or whatever but there’s… it’s different.”

“Nobody has to know.”

“It’s not that,” Jooheon said, then hesitated. “I dunno. That’s part of it. I just can’t relax, it felt…”

“... Good?” said Minhyuk, trying not to let his self-conscious uncertainty color his words too thick.

“Good,” Jooheon said. He sighed, a thick heavy breath somewhere between silence and a moan, writhing just a tiny bit as though remembering something too good to be explained properly. A full-body memory. “Really good. Really, really good.”

“How come your vocabulary is so small?” Minhyuk had to sing the South Korean national anthem to himself in his head in order to keep from getting hard. “Aren’t you the native English speaker here?”

“Don’t make fun of me for doing things you want me to do,” Jooheon said.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Talk to me some more about how good it feels when I finger you, I liked that part.”

“I want to try again,” Jooheon said, “but I don’t know if I can relax.” Then he paused. Cleared his throat. “So my point is, I’ve been thinking. You know this Saturday…?”

 

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Maybe it was thunder that woke him up, a flicker of lightning through the blinds, rain against the glass of his bedroom window. Jooheon sat up in bed and then woke up, in that order, and spent a few silent, busy seconds trying to figure out why. It was a May thunderstorm, a little weird but not impossible, and while the lightning seemed close and the thunder almost closer it didn't seem like enough to wake him up.

His phone screen was too bright when he checked the time and he could see 2:48 AM in negative when he closed his eyes for the following thirty seconds. He wasn't thirsty and he didn't have to take a piss and the rain wasn't exactly unusual...

Next to him Minhyuk shifted restlessly on the bed, springs creaking under him as he moved.

Oh yeah.

The last time he'd shared a bed with someone it had been Jaehee on Christmas Eve at his parents' house because she'd insisted, promising that the _only_ way she'd be able to sleep in time for Santa to come was if Honey told her at least two stories about great grandma, and she slept like a medium-sized rock. Minhyuk, meanwhile, did not sleep like a rock. He slept like a tilt-a-whirl.

Just now he was stretched out long, long, long, with his legs crossed at the ankle and one arm up over his head, the other hand resting on his stomach. Even in his sleep he had energy, one foot wiggling in time to some inconsistent dreamspace beat.

Jooheon lay back down next to him and looked at him for a little while. He'd borrowed a pair of Jooheon's pajama pants and they were almost hilariously loose on his hips, sagging on him enough that the rough fuzz of his pubic hair showed over the waistband, but while they'd been wearing t-shirts when they went to bed neither of them were wearing them now. (He’d left a bite-shaped bruise on Minhyuk’s chest. What was he, seventeen?)

Minhyuk's hand lay relaxed on his stomach and it was too hard to resist, though to be fair Jooheon didn't try very hard. He reached out, threading their fingers together. Minhyuk's hands were bigger than his, which was kind of annoying but which made sense. He was a little taller, skin a little darker, voice a little rougher, hair a little longer. He was angular, too, angular enough that the almost straight contour of his face caught the light sharp and fine.

At the park, just past dusk and lit up by the old green-amber street lights scattering the pothole-riddled parking lot, Minhyuk had looked like something magical. An elf, a vampire, something that went bump in the night and gave you a kiss too. In his bedroom with the blinds down it was so much darker but his eyes had gotten used to it. He didn't reach out and trace the curve of the shadow under Minhyuk's lower lip but it was a closer thing than he'd have liked to admit.

Minhyuk sighed, rolling his head over to face Jooheon. Despite his otherwise restless sleeping habits he looked serene, eyelids closed lightly and lips parted.

The words _sarang hae_ whispered themselves in the back of his head, but when they did they used Minhyuk's voice.

People said a lot of things before, during, and directly after sex. It was a little like being drunk, in that you felt everything harder and more, and saying _I love you_ with post-coital sweat in your eyes was a little bit like saying _I love you_ after two shots of whiskey and half a beer.

Jooheon wasn't drunk. He wasn't post-coital. He wasn't even that sleepy. He was just himself, and what he thought to himself then was: _Oh_.

Minhyuk opened his eyes just a crack, eyebrows coming together in sleepy curiosity. “You’re thinking too loud,” he mumbled, shifting in closer, rolling to press against Jooheon’s side. “Woke me up.”

“Sorry,” Jooheon whispered.

 _Oh_ , he thought to himself again, and the thought was accompanied by an ice cold spike of fear.

Minhyuk laughed, an exhausted cough of teasing affection, hiding it in Jooheon’s chest. “Too cute, baby.” He was back asleep in mere moments, breath slowing and hands relaxing.

Jooheon had spent a lot of his life being afraid of one thing or another and he was sick of it, right up until the point where he had to get his nerve up and actually do something about it. That ice cold spike of fear was just one of millions, and the warmth that curled around his heart and lungs when Minhyuk called him _baby_ was something he’d never felt before in his whole entire life.

People do what they do. Why stop yourself from living?

“Sarang hae,” Jooheon said. Whispered, really. He was just tasting it. Practicing it. Trying it on like a costume, or a wig, or an engagement ring you don’t intend to buy—

“Na do,” Minhyuk sighed in Korean against his skin. _Me too_.

 

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

 

"Oh fuck," Jooheon said, sitting back in the driver's seat of his to pat frantically at the front of his pants. "My badge is still on my nightstand. Are you gonna be late if I—?"

"Go get it," Minhyuk interrupted, shooing him off. "Everybody at work loves me, if I'm late once it's not gonna kill anyone."

"Yeah, but don't you have bills to pay?" Jooheon said, scrambling out of the car.

"I'll live, just go. Idiot," Minhyuk added, leaning over to shout at him as he slammed the door shut and ran back toward his apartment building. Minhyuk sighed and sat back. God. Jooheon's ass was a gift.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, fully expecting it to be Honey texting to ask if his badge actually _was_ in the car, but when he swiped the notification open it was [NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS] that blared up at him.

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _Where the fuck are you? Aren't you going to be late?_

_—  
_ _i stayed over at honey's  
_ _he's driving me_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _Would it have killed you to leave a note?_

—  
 _yes i would literally die, ki, is that what you want  
_ _that's it, you're out of my will  
_ _wonnie gets the house_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _Which one?_

—  
 _all of them_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _He only needs one. All he does is sleep._

_—  
_ _are you seriously arguing with me about whether or not i'm leaving you a house in my will_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _No, I'm just saying that Hyungwon is a simple man with simple tastes and leaving him that much real estate would overwhelm him. I'm only thinking of his emotional and psychological well-being and I'm offended that you would imply otherwise._

—  
 _you're such a pervert_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _I'm really not._

—  
 _speaking of how was your date with honey’s best friend  
_ _...... ki r u still there_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _It was fine._

—  
 _ruh-roh_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _Could we talk about it later? I think I bit off more than I can chew._

—  
 _what, did you offer to be his daddy or something ki oh my god  
_ _oh my god. ki. did you become a sugar daddy_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _NO  
_ _Maybe  
_ _Help me  
_ _I've never been a sugar daddy before I don't know how_

—  
 _do you think i'm easy  
_ _you'll need to grovel_

—  
[NOT MY MOM BUT THINKS HE IS]  
 _What do you mean "grovel"?_

—  
 _i'll think about it and get back to you  
_ _honey's here gotta go_  
—

 

“If you can guess the song in the first three seconds I’ll give you road head,” Minhyuk said as Jooheon opened the driver’s side door. He hid the screen of his phone behind his hand. “What do you say?”

“Road head is dangerous,” Jooheon replied, buckling his seatbelt. “And—” Minhyuk pressed play. “—And anyway it’s Treasure by Bruno Mars, because you _always_ play Treasure by Bruno Mars when I’m getting into the car.”

“I’ll have to switch it up,” Minhyuk mumbled to himself, scrolling through his library. “How do you feel about the Mowgli’s?”

“I’m good,” Jooheon said. He turned the key in the ignition. “You’re gonna have to tell me how to get there, baby.”

“Turn left out of here,” Minhyuk said, pointing. “Are you gonna start calling me baby now? Is this a new thing?”

“No,” Jooheon said quickly. Then: “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I don’t have to. Do you—?”

“Shh,” Minhyuk cooed, patting him on the face. “I don’t care what you call me as long as you call me, bumblebee. Get on the freeway going south for two exits and if I can’t hit a high note don’t say anything.”

Minhyuk hit every high note, at least as far as Jooheon was concerned, and he promised he wasn’t lying. The drive to the YMCA went faster than it usually did, some combination of better traffic in a different direction and the phenomenon of the passage of time kicking into high gear during all the times you wish would last forever, and when they pulled up to the curb Jooheon reached out to catch Minhyuk’s hand before he could get out of the car.

“Hey,” he said, then looked like there were some more words he wanted to say after that but couldn’t figure out what they were. “Thanks,” he settled on after a second. “For listening to me yesterday, I mean. About stuff.”

“I won’t make you use your words this time,” Minhyuk admonished, “but only because I know for a fact that one of my coworkers can read lips and I don’t need her knowing more about my personal life than I tell her myself. But you’re welcome.”

“I can’t believe you work at the YMCA,” Jooheon said, hand falling from his wrist. “I’ve been singing the song to myself in my head ever since you mentioned it the first time, you know that?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time? I said, young man—”

“I’m making you late,” Jooheon interrupted, “and that’s making me late, and I need my whole paycheck to pay for the weed this weekend.”

“I got it,” Minhyuk said, leaning in to press a quick kiss to the corner of Jooheon’s mouth. “Be as late as you want. I’ll cover the weed.”

“On your salary?” Jooheon asked, aghast, but Minhyuk was already halfway out of the car. “I can’t let you do that.”

“To be fair,” Minhyuk countered, “you have no idea how much I get paid.” He closed the door on Jooheon’s offended squawk and twirled his way toward the building.

He came in through the big glass front doors with his head in the clouds and his mouth full of honeyed kisses and his heart warm and red and throbbing like something really, really gross. The receptionist glanced up at him as he walked by. “We were worried something happened to you,” she said. “You’re never late. What happened?”

“Cait,” Minhyuk replied, leaning against the counter to beam her his brightest, biggest smile. “Something terrible happened to me. I’m in love.”

“Oh, no,” Cait said.

“Oh, yes,” Minhyuk said back. “And he’s _amazing_.”

“Does Mr Amazing know you don’t have a job?” Cait asked.

“He thinks I work here,” Minhyuk said. He hesitated, a horrible thought rolling over him. “I probably should have told him by now, huh?”

Cait rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s why we pay you the big bucks I guess. Here’s your volunteer badge. You’re in the Penguin Room with the toddlers today, so make sure you grab one of the waterproof smocks— Wednesday is fingerpainting day.”

Minhyuk took the well-loved badge out of her hands and looped the lanyard around his neck. “Oh, Cait,” he sighed. “Toddlers? Fingerpainting? You always know just what to say to instantly make me feel better.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter where jooheon finally gets dicked

There were probably words other than _soft_ that Minhyuk could use to describe the way Jooheon felt under his hands but he was just stoned enough not to care. Jooheon was soft, he was soft, he was so fucking soft, skin indenting under each fingertip and the chub of his hip shifting as he moved. What had he said before? Something about Jooheon being as soft on the inside as he was on the outside.

They'd talked about it, days ago, what would and what wouldn't be okay when Jooheon was too stoned to decide in the moment, but they hadn't talked about the way Jooheon would kiss him exactly the right way. They hadn't talked about how they'd barely make it through every single door between the big basement room to the bed, how Jooheon wouldn't be inclined to do things such as keep his hands to himself. 

"Guess how much I want you to fuck me," Jooheon whispered against his mouth.

"A lot?" Minhyuk guessed, his superior tolerance electing him the leader of their two-person excursion. The doorknob to his bedroom rattled under his hand and for god's sake if he had to kick this goddamn door down he would.

"A lot," Jooheon said. He was pink, (the apples of his cheeks and the tips of his ears and the stripe up his throat that always blushed a tiny bit darker then the rest), lips chapped and bitten but wet with saliva. They looked like they should taste like candied strawberries, and Minhyuk's mouth watered at the thought. "I think about it all— all the time." He staggered a little as the door finally opened. "That's a secret. Don't tell my boyfriend."

Minhyuk caught him by one wrist and pulled him back upright. "He already knows." For a second Jooheon looked lost, stricken, but Minhyuk kissed the worry off of Jooheon's soft pink face with a laugh. "Don't worry."

"What if you _find out_ ," Jooheon said, voice hushed in a hoarse stage whisper.

Minhyuk kicked the door closed behind them and settled his hands around Jooheon's waist. Jooheon's throat looked like a good place to kiss, so he kissed it. "What if I do find out? What then?"

"Then..." This train of thought took enough effort that Jooheon stopped cold. Minhyuk paused too, pulling away to wait for Jooheon to figure out what he wanted to say. "Then you'll know," Jooheon finished awkwardly, words slurring.

"Know what?"

He knew he should just be focusing on getting Jooheon out of his clothes but god, part of what he loved so much about him was how cute he was. All his little quirks, the things he got shy over, the way he could only talk about how much he wanted to get fucked in the vaguest and most disconnected of terms. It was so fucking cute. 

"How much," Jooheon said, stuttering a little. He rolled his hips forward a little, and when they made contact he moved into it instead of flinching away. His eyes fluttered shut at the friction. "How much I want you to fuck me."

"Tell me about that," Minhyuk said, mumbled, voice muffled in the soft, sweet place where Jooheon's jaw met his ear. "As many times as you want."

"That's a lot of times." Jooheon opened his eyes, one eyelid taking a little more time than the other, and the tip of his tongue flickered out to wet his pink rosebud lips. "I want you to fuck me so many times."

He had Jooheon's fly down, hand slipping between the denim and cotton to find what he was looking for. Jooheon responded so beautifully that it almost made Minhyuk believe in god, rutting up into his palm and moaning low and deep in his chest. "What if you don't like it?"

"M'gonna like it! I'm— _hyung_ ," he stammered, his voice twisted into a desperate whine. He curled up, making himself small against Minhyuk's chest. "I'm not smart enough for this right now, please, just..."

Minhyuk carefully pried Jooheon off of him. "Just?" he asked, gently.

Jooheon heaved a huge, stoned sigh. He made some general and awkward gestures. He opened his mouth once or twice, each time thinking better of it. Finally he said, in slurred but clinical tones: "I want you to put your penis in my ass and then move it around until one or both of us gets off."

Then he said, "Stop laughing. I'm being serious."

"You're adorable," Minhyuk gasped out after a few busy seconds struggling to regain a straight face. "God, how am I so lucky? Honey bee you have no idea how honored I would be to put my penis in your ass and move it around until one or both of us gets off."

"Then _do_ ," Jooheon whined, hands twisting in the fabric of Minhyuk's shirt. He almost looked like he was going to cry, or throw a tantrum, or _something_.

"Oh," said Minhyuk. Jooheon shuddered under his touch. _Oh_. "Yeah. Okay." (Wake the fuck up, Minhyuk.) "Turn around, baby."

He said it but he didn't need to because he was already turning Jooheon without any assistance, twisting his hips just far enough to knock him off balance and spin him. The mattress was high, high enough that when Minhyuk pushed Jooheon forward to bend him over the edge of the bed he didn't have enough time to catch his weight on his elbows and instead landed face first on the duvet, bouncing a little with the impact. 

Jooheon arched and moaned when Minhyuk tugged his jeans down off his ass by his belt loops, hips kicking back, hands twisting in the blankets on Minhyuk's bed. The edge of the mattress was digging into his hip bones, he could feel it, but there were so many more important things happening that he found it hard to focus on just the one. For one thing Minhyuk was touching him, and he'd had wet dreams like this, he'd felt weird about masturbating to fantasies like this. (He'd even masturbated to this a few times and barely felt weird at all, but later felt weird about not feeling weird.)

It was easier to admit when he was stoned; it was possible, he was able to stop caring just enough to actually ask for what he wanted. Jooheon gasped, and when he breathed out he said, "Please fuck me."

Minhyuk groaned above him, curving down to rest his forehead between Jooheon's shoulder blades. He held on to Jooheon's waist so close and tight— maybe it was the high, maybe it was reality, but Jooheon could swear that he felt every individual peak and valley in the whorls of Minhyuk's fingertips. 

"Wanna take my time with you, though." The rasp of his voice was even thicker than normal, and between his accent and his high his words were slurred nearly beyond comprehension. "Make you feel so good, baby."

Minhyuk's dick was hard and pressing against his ass and it was starting to get really difficult to think about anything else. It felt like he was being taken over by it, the pressure of Minhyuk's cock and his grip on his waist and how fucking goddamn much he _needed_ Minhyuk to just— just _fuck_ him. He was too stoned to think about much else. He was drowning in it.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked back over his shoulder, shamelessly copying a pose he'd seen in dozens of porn clips. "Later," he said. "If I don't do it now I'll never do it."

"Okay," Minhyuk breathed. "Okay, okay." Jooheon shuddered as Minhyuk slipped his fingers under the waistband of his underwear and pulled.

Despite himself— despite the high— Jooheon still clenched his fists in the blanket, even though he couldn't quite think of what he was so scared of. He was just scared in general, and Minhyuk's silence...

As though on cue, Minhyuk let out a long, slow, reverent breath. "You gotta talk to me, baby," he said. "Tell me how you like it, all right?"

"Yeah," Jooheon breathed, closing his eyes tight. "Yeah, I will."

There was the pop of a lube bottle opening, and Jooheon flinched—

Minhyuk had fingered him before, had found his prostate after only a few tries (a feat Jooheon had not been able to reproduce on his own), and he remembered it, mostly, though the memory was somewhat overshadowed by other events that had occurred on the same day. He remembered liking it, even if it did feel weird, and today was no different.

Okay, well, it was different. Just... in other ways.

His heart was beating so hard he could feel his whole body shudder with the force of it, hot and rough in his chest like a hiccup. Jooheon had expected to be scared and he was, kind of, but most of the fear evaporated with the smoke— and then the rest disappeared right about the time Minhyuk pressed two fingers inside him and it felt so fucking good he stopped thinking.

Jooheon sagged on the bed and gasped, held his breath, gasped again as his body rocked back onto Minhyuk's hand all by itself. No moment of shy curiosity was as good as this. Minhyuk's free hand came up to rest on Jooheon's shoulder, just under his neck, broad hand and long fingers stretching so far around Jooheon wondered (idly, of course) whether or not Minhyuk could choke him like this. 

He squeezed, running the pad of his thumb along the grain of a sore muscle and pressing him into the bed to keep him still. "Nervous, baby?"

"No," Jooheon moaned. "Maybe. No. Ah— hyung—"

It was impossible to say because... because of a lot of reasons, including ones such as Because It Felt Too Good, but mostly it was because when he did open his mouth he just mewled. His high had turned up all his senses to maximum and Minhyuk seemed to know it, taking advantage of it to break Jooheon down with as many tiny, curious touches as he could.

"Talk to me," Minhyuk whispered. "You like it?"

Jooheon whined a small moan in the back of his throat and nodded wordlessly, biting his lip.

"Use your words, baby. What do you want me to do to you?"

"Anything," Jooheon said. He wiggled, feeling too hot and too cold and never, _never_ touched enough. "Everything. Whatever."

Minhyuk laughed, but it was a short tight cough of laughter, distracted, affectionate. "You're so cute," he rasped. "You're so fucking cute."

It wasn't that Minhyuk had been expecting Jooheon to resist. Maybe he'd expected him to be a little less confident, a little less sure. He wasn't expecting Jooheon to be quite this certain.

"You're sure," he said, because he couldn't not.

"Fuck me or leave," Jooheon said, breathless, words muffled in the duvet. "And don't leave."

It felt like there should be something to mark the occasion but all Minhyuk had was lube, a condom, and shaking hands. Then again Jooheon sucked in a shuddering, moaning breath when the condom wrapper tore and Minhyuk didn't actually care that much.

He squeezed out some lube. (Then he looked at his dick and squeezed out a little more.) They were both still mostly dressed, Minhyuk's fly down and Jooheon's jeans pulled down off his ass, and somehow that made it even dirtier than it would have been otherwise. 

Minhyuk had never cared, never, until he met Jooheon and found out that Jooheon had never bottomed before. Virginity was a meaningless social construct with no actual value that was traditionally used to police sexual behaviors, Minhyuk was fully aware, but another thing he was aware of was that he was about to give Jooheon the first dicking of his entire blessed life.

It wasn't the corruption. He wasn't dragging Jooheon into debauchery. It was that he felt as though he'd be given something— an opportunity to prove himself, maybe, or simply trust— and his heartbeat thudded in his ears. 

Minhyuk exhaled a long, slow breath and ran one hand up Jooheon's back, tailbone to neck, dragging the cotton fabric of his t-shirt to bunch up around his armpits, then curved down over him and pressed a kiss to the place on his spine right between his shoulder blades, as though it were the hinge of a wing. Something had his tongue. (What was that saying? A cat? A cat had his tongue?) Something had his tongue, maybe a cat, maybe his heart, and he didn't say I Love You.

Instead of saying I Love You, what Minhyuk said was: "I would give you anything."

"Anything?" Jooheon sighed underneath him. His skin was warm, so hot it almost burned Minhyuk's lips.

"Anything," Minhyuk said.

Everything.

He'd expected to be scared. He'd always been scared before (or maybe a better word was _bitter_ ), the kind of fear that lead to self sabotage and calculated thoughtlessness and ghosting the people who loved him most because he couldn't hold everything at once. Their hopes and fears, their misplaced trust. It's hard to want people who need you.

Sometimes people need you when you know they shouldn't and you can't give them what they're looking for even as they wait, expectant, for something that you've never had. It's all smoke and mirrors and cloak and dagger and all manner of cliches that have been wrung nearly dry of pertinence but are so much easier to say than _I tried so hard to fool myself that I fooled you too._

The fear that ate at him now was new and strange and beautiful. It wasn't bitter. It was ice cold and gentle, sparking up and down his spine, and he'd been given something. An opportunity, maybe. Trust.

How beautiful, being trusted instead of needed. 

How strange. 

How comforting. 

How absolutely fucking terrifying.

"What do you want?" Minhyuk asked, because he didn't know how not to be needed.

Jooheon laughed, a quick breathy giggle, and burrowed his face in the blanket. "Whatever you'll give me," he said.

This time when Minhyuk didn't say I Love You he rolled Jooheon over onto his back instead, pressed in between his thighs to bow in low over him and bracket his head between his forearms and kiss him, breathed him in.

"How's this," he panted, pulling away. "I'm gonna give you a good dicking."

Jooheon arched up and moaned a low, thick laugh as he wrapped his arms around Minhyuk's shoulders. "Y'know," he slurred, "I was sorta hoping."

Minhyuk blinked, and breathed, and spent exactly one second thinking about the best course of action. He pushed back up from the bed and unceremoniously jerked Jooheon's jeans and boxers down his thighs until they were off.

"Fuck me," Jooheon said.

"If you _insist_ ," Minhyuk sighed, rolling his eyes theatrically. "Okay— now breathe, baby."

Jooheon obeyed, taking in a slow breath, and tried not to let his eyelids drift shut no matter how stoned he was. The blinds over the windows glowed amber yellow and it hit Minhyuk's sweat-streaked skin and made him look like a god. (Was it bad, that he always thought of his boyfriend as a deity of some kind? Better than the alternative, he supposed.) He looked like a god, and Jooheon couldn't stand the thought of missing even a moment of it so he kept his eyes open for as long as he could— until Minhyuk's cock pushed against him, and then in him, and then—

"Baby— are you okay, did that hurt—?"

"Don't stop," Jooheon breathed. He was actually pretty impressed by how calmly he said it. He barely blacked out at all. "Please—"

"Are you sure?"

Jooheon replied, but whether he used words he couldn't say. Minhyuk laughed, and kissed him, and pushed in even deeper.

He knew. He _knew_. He knew Minhyuk's dick was bigger than his fingers, he was completely aware of it, show him a comparative diagram and he'd ace the test every time— and despite knowing all of this it still knocked the breath out of him, the way Minhyuk seemed to fill up the whole damn world.

Minhyuk's t-shirt crumpled up in Jooheon's fists as he tightened his grip, trying to keep the rest of himself as loose as possible. Breathing was difficult. Thinking was difficult. Minhyuk pushed in, pulled out, pushed in a little deeper, rocking into him cautiously, and every single one of Jooheon's nerves lit up like a light bulb. He was relaxed, ( _god_ he was relaxed), and even if he weren't he wasn't sure if he'd mind.

Finally the lines of Minhyuk's hip bones pressed up against the backs of his thighs. "Fuck," Minhyuk whispered. His face was in shadow when he pushed up but Jooheon could see the spit shine of his lips, the curved shadow of his eyelashes. 

Jooheon had expected to feel unpleasantly stretched, but it was more like being filled up slow— waking up from a deep sleep only to discover that it's late afternoon on a heavy thunderstorm summer day, drinking hot chocolate by the pink-cheeked warmth of a wooden stove in the middle of a snowstorm— and okay, fine, maybe he wouldn’t like it if he wasn’t stoned, but he was pretty damn sure he still would.

"C'mon," Jooheon breathed, the words catching in his throat. Minhyuk's hands tightened on his waist. "Hyung, c'mon—"

"Say please," Minhyuk murmured.

"Please," Jooheon sighed, letting his head fall back on the bed.

The first thrust was careful and slow, a gentle slide more than the sort of frenetic back and forth Jooheon normally associated with sex, but he had to bite his lips together not to moan at the sheer pressure of it. Of course he moaned anyway, and why had he been holding it in? Minhyuk groaned back in response, wordless, breathless, pushing in just a little bit faster and kissing him on beat with the stroke.

"Oh my god," Jooheon choked, and Minhyuk laughed as he caught the words right out from between Jooheon's teeth.

"Oh your god," he said, picking up his pace. "What about him?"

Jooheon shook his head stupidly, an unsteady back and forth, and pressed his fingertips hard into Minhyuk's shoulders as he held him close. "Shut up. No jokes."

"That's not how I operate," Minhyuk groaned against Jooheon's throat. He pulled Jooheon's legs up higher by his knees, pushed his thighs back, angled himself carefully. "I'm too clever to shut up."

Jooheon glared up at him, brow furrowed and lips pursed in an irritable, intoxicated pout. "Bastard," he said, but then Minhyuk fucked into him at just the right angle and his eyes rolled back in his head. "Oh, fuck—"

"Oh, fuck," Minhyuk echoed against his lips, breathless and laughing. "S'good? You like it?"

The response he got back was just a cut off moan, a whining hum of confirmation snipped short by a sucked in breath of shock as Minhyuk thrust forward again. "Yeah," Jooheon slurred. His tongue seemed thick in his mouth, like he could barely speak, like breathing was difficult, and god he was honest. He said _yeah_ and fucking meant it. Then he gasped out, "More," and Minhyuk figured he should take him at his word on that, too.

Minhyuk had laid in bed and thought about this— stood in the shower, daydreamed in traffic— he'd thought so much about what it would be like. He'd wondered if Jooheon was loud (Minhyuk chose to take Jooheon’s muted enjoyment as a challenge), if he was flexible, if he'd move with him through the motions or if he'd freeze cold at the moment of truth. He didn't just move, god, Jooheon responded to every touch so god damn beautifully it almost ached. The dull heat between them was so relentless that a stupid part of Minhyuk wondered if he'd still have fingerprints afterward or if they'll have simply burnt off.

He moaned all the way in the back of his throat, biting his lips together and pressing his forehead to Jooheon's shoulder. "I'm gonna come," he whispered, "baby— please, I can't—"

Jooheon gasped, arching up and grabbing fistfuls of the blanket to brace himself. "Yes," he said, or something like it.

Minhyuk had been in love before, felt white-hot lightning in his lungs that sustained and destroyed him at the same time, and he'd enjoyed it the same way one would enjoy an acid trip: with a mixture of terror and optimism. (The terror had been correct. The optimism... less so.) He'd been in love before and it had been white-hot and terrible, and then—

And _then_ — 

It was like the hang time when a bottle rocket reaches the apex of its ascent and seems almost to hover in mid-air for a fraction of a second before gravity gets its claws into it again and drags it back down to earth. A half second of clarity, sparkling and bright like a fuckin JJ Abrams movie, Jooheon pink-cheeked and gorgeous under him and with him and around him.

"Hey," Minhyuk said. "I love you."

Then he came so hard he blacked out, which just goes to show that you shouldn't smoke weed and fuck because you might end up completely missing the best part.


End file.
